Suburbia
by Falaphesian
Summary: With a runaway ferris wheel and the sinking of the sun, Riku's life was forever changed. Thrown into a cold and hostile new world, he battles locals, relatives, and himself as he tries to seek out a little shelter from a major storm. RikuSora, SoraRiku.
1. Portal To Somewhere

**Suburbia**

'Portal to Somewhere'

_"Personally, I... Well, I must say. I'm a bit surprised he hasn't dropped dead yet."_

_"Oh for crying out loud, you can't be serious." _

_"...Stress cardiomyopathy **is **serious, it's-"_

_"You're not even a real doctor."_

_"Maya, please..."_

_"Off my back, for a second. He's not even a real doctor."_

_"If you would like to see my credentials, they're on the wall. Over there. ...All five frames. Yes. Thank you. If that's all--"_

Behold the kid in the waiting room.

...Not that one.

The one to the left.

Yeah, the kinda freakishly pale one. Moving past that, the kid's not just freakishly pale, he's freakishly Riku. Heads, shoulders, knees and toes-- the whole nine yards, absolutely Riku, staring rather intently at his smiley-face shoelaces. They're walking back in time here, Riku and these shoelaces of his, just to tell you a fine old story that truly began, not in a psychiatric waiting room, but in a town faire square in the fine month of March.

In like a lion, out like a lamb.

No one could have seen it coming. A complete and total freak accident, for sure. After all, it's not every day that you see a runaway ferris wheel making its way down Main Street, taking a fire hydrant and a corn dog stand right along with it. It rolled straight into the ocean, dead set on a dead-man's path, but shockingly enough, only two truly died. One man, one woman-- a delightful middle-aged couple who had asked for the operator to stop it at the top, just for a while, just long enough for them to take in the water, the island, and the dying sun.

That dying, dying sun.

It was somewhat ironic that their son-- not their sun, which was dying, but their son, which was living-- was buying a corn dog at that moment the screech was heard, the metal was bent, and the wheel sent spinning off into the evening. He had just started over towards a bench and sat down, napkin in one hand, corn dog in the other. Nothing on it-- the boy was a die hard plainest and would sooner drop dead than having anything come between him and that pure, pure taste of processed meat and cornbread.

He had looked up with an expression of mild interest as the wheel rolled on past, colossal in size and perhaps significant in meaning. Streamers and rope lights were the banners of the newly-weds, a man, a wife, and their wheel. Riku didn't know at that time that those were his parents being spun, jerked, and twisted about so violently by the out-of-control amusement. He simply stared, mouth slightly ajar, corn dog hitting the asphalt with a nearly inaudible and sickening plop.

He merely stared, yes, stared as the wheel screamed and groaned and moaned its way down into the harbor, into the bay, into the water with quit the terrific splash. When the waves died down, he could see the very top of the ferris wheel protruding from the water's surface by just five or six feet. Poised perfect on the crooked crown were two bodies, tangled up in one another. In the moment he took in the bodies, his thoughts were, oddly enough, not the predictable _Oh my GOD, those are **my** 'rents up there! _

They were simply: _Weird how the wires look like dead sea grass_.

Maybe the wires really did look like dead sea grass, floating there around the sunken ferris wheel. Surrounded by the terrified shrieks and howls of the town's craziest and sanest alike, Riku's thoughts were, ultimately, lost. Sort of like the corn dog by his feet. By his feet, which, mind you, were dressed in a pair of Vans, tied with a pair of smiling laces, each of their faces a different, happy color.

Weird, and a little haunting, perhaps. Rumors flew that day of the boy's deranged nature the moment he laid eyes on his poor, pathetic parents. Both of them had expressions of pure elation painted on their cold, dead faces. Riku stared on, oblivious and numb. He looked to the ground, he looked to his sneakers, and he looked to his laces. _You keep my shoes on my feet,_ he thought.

And standing beside the double grave, somewhere past the black slacks and above the mossy earth-- _You keep my shoes on my feet, laces._

On the day of his parents' funeral, not many people came. Riku was not so far gone as to be spared the torture of wondering where his friends were. But when he allowed himself to focus for a moment, to think for a moment, he found he already knew the answer. They always had gone on about how he liked to solve his problems by himself. This was just another one of those many, many problems. Those many Riku problems.

During that time, the relatives arrived-- slowly at first, but with a growing frenzy and a more maddening message every day. Riku shook so many hands in the space of one week, he was half surprised when he remembered that, no, he was not running for mayor, he was burying his mother and father. A tragedy covered up by warm smiles and one hell of a bizarre commentary.

_"Boy, ol' Haj' 'n me, ol' Haj' 'n me, we used to have some good times, boy. A shame, it is. A damn shame an' I'm sorry to hear 'bout it. Yeah, poor ol' Haj'."_

_"Your mother was always such a gentle woman... I'm so sorry for your loss, Riku. If there's anything-- and I mean anything I can do. Please. Don't be afraid to let me know, mm? Here, this gelatin is for you, boy. Ohhh, do stay safe."_

'Hajime & Nora Wataya' was written in some crazy sort of lettering on the gigantic headstone poised over the grave site. Above the carved marble stood an angel, a cross dangling from one hand, a lantern from the other. Every time Riku looked at the peaceful, expressionless face, he couldn't help but feel as though that damn statue in itself was more depressing than the bodies of those buried beneath it. He would've liked to chip and chisel the wings clean off, but Riku was a good boy.

Riku didn't go around dismantling angels.

Riku went around having a massive series of chest pains and searing headaches that left him bed-ridden and virtually immobilized for weeks.

Talk of the town was that the boy was touched. The thing was, Riku was starting to believe it himself. And the belief started festering like the worst kind of wound, festering for some months until it grew so bad, so damn bad, so very damn bad.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where the first act begins, heralding the arrival of the Type A aunt and uncle. The classics. The aunt, Mayako, came from his father's side. The uncle, her husband, was an American man, laid-back as could be and only driven up and over a wall, any wall, by his dearly beloved wife. Quite a pair, the two of them made that day. That day Mayako grudgingly let herself in, presented Riku with a paper from the court, a paper full of legal mumbo-jumbo, a paper making Riku legally bound to Mayako and her hubby.

So ends the beginning, giving way to the middle, to the early, early middle, to the summer, to the scene in the psych's office where Mayako was once again trying to jump through any hoop imaginable to get Riku off her hands and on his own.

"It would not only be illegal, in this case, but terribly, _terribly_ unwise to let him alone. After two attacks already, it would be a grave mistake to leave Riku to fend for himself. What he needs, ma'am, is a change of scenery. Take him back with you. Get him away from all this. Let him start over. He might surprise you."

"The only thing Riku's bound to surprise us with is a new local gang."

"Maya, Hajime never mentioned Riku was in a--"

"Haji-- Hajime? Since when do you know my own brother better than me? Honestly, he and that woman spoiled that kid rotten and now they've left me to deal with it. Good lord. Good lord."

Riku tilted his head to one side, his cheek resting on his knee, his body scrunched up into the large leather armchair the clinic provided. With his eyes open, the smell of dead cows sort of bothered the kid, but with his eyes closed, it wasn't so bad. He could hear their voices in the other room and he certainly wasn't stupid, by any means. Under any normal circumstances, Riku would've thrown open the door with a triumphant cry and would have proceeded to curse the living hell out of his aunt. He would've loved that. He would've loved to do that.

But as things were, Riku was heavily sedated. He wasn't entirely sure what kind of drugs they had him on. He wasn't depressed, therefore he only became more confused as he tried to figure out just what on earth they thought was wrong with him. _If I knew what it was, I could prove to them it isn't._

_Ugh... confusing..._

Wincing and curling his arms around his head, Riku remained motionless for a good long while. He didn't want to listen, but he couldn't escape the voices...

"...an entire summer to recuperate and I'm sure he'll be alright."

"And what about when school starts up? Where do you think he's gonna go?"

"...Is there a public high school near you?"

"How long do you expect us to take care of this kid, huh? When's he gonna be able to get out on his own? Isn't he old enough?"

"Maya..."

"Don't you 'Maya' me. I'm _serious_. I can _tell_. That kid's no good. He's always been a little queer, you know."

"One year, ma'am. Time enough for us to wait and see if the medicine does his heart any good, to see if he eases his nerves any. Just one year-- not even that. He'll be entering his senior year in high school and, after that, college, if he chooses. He'll inherit his parents' money and shouldn't require anything more from you or your husband."

"He'd better not."

Some time later, the door opened. Riku could hear it, just as he could hear the approaching footsteps, just as he could hear her words, snapping, "Oh for crying out loud, don't sit in the chair like that. You're _seventeen_, not seven. Come on, we're outta here."

And that was it. Just like that, they were indeed out of there. Boarded a plane for some place Riku had heard of, but had never been, for some place that was, at the end of the day, still not home. When Riku arrived at his aunt and uncle's house, it took him a moment to take it in. It was not so much that the building was impressive-- it looked just like every other single family home on the block. It was more the sudden, painful realization that this was the new life he'd had dealt out to him.

It felt strange. It made something in his chest bite and crawl and scratch and scrape. It made him cringe. It made him stop and stare and stand in the doorway of his new bedroom and just stand, stand, stand and shake and quiver and realize that it was not his bedroom, but a guest room. This house was not made for him and he did not belong. Nor was he at all welcome.

The first night, Riku slept on the floor, propped up on a pillow salvaged from his real room, from his real home back on the islands. He didn't want to disturb the perfectly made bedspread laid out over a bed so foreboding.

The second night, he was too tired to care. But he still didn't stop thinking of the slight possibility that there might be some sort of accident, some sort of bizarre shift in dimensions that would leave him waking up somewhere else. And he didn't pull himself out of that hazy half-wishful, half-delirious state of mind, not for quite some time. Not until the room stifled him so much that he retreated to the backyard, to the verdana painted white and lying beneath the scorching sun.

They kept him on meds, that poor boy. More meds than an eighty year old diabetic with a plastic hip could every possibly hope to shake a stick at. He was sedated, he was passive, he was, to be terribly cliche, nothing more than a sickly shell of what he had been. Riku should have taken every step to Destati kicking and screaming and biting and fighting and shoving and resisting, dammit. But he wasn't-- found he couldn't. Found he couldn't do anything more than sit and sit and sulk and stare up and out at that tired sun hanging in the tired sky.

Until the day Riku found himself-- eyes closed, breathing slowed to a crawling pace-- trying to make believe that the drop of sweat sliding down the bridge of his nose was really water, that the sky was about to open up and let down a nice, cool shower.

But then there came the voice.

"Who're you?"

She had the appearance of a girl freshly attacked by a professional stylist and a curling iron, but it wasn't necessarily in a bad sense. Loose red curls hung down around her bare shoulders, scrawny limbs and skin alike held back behind a tank top and a rather distressed-looking pleated mini skirt. Her neck was bent just so, head cradled in her arms, legs locked around the railing of the porch. All in all, she looked quite like some beautiful, exotic little monkey.

The stare-down began like that, rather uneventfully and rather dead silent until it dawned on Riku that the girl wasn't exactly planning on leaving unless she got an answer to her question.

"Who're_ you_?" Riku countered. Really, he didn't honestly care who she was. He cared about two things: one, why she was there, and two, why she felt the need to pry into his life during such a time in which he felt like ripping heads off. Quietly and sullenly... ripping heads off. But still, proper manners deemed he ask her for her name first. A name which she gave most willingly.

"I'm Kairi. Your turn."

"Riku. Uh, Wataya."

The Kairi girl smiled, revealing perfectly straight and pearly teeth. "Riku Wataya... May adopt you or something?"

"No." Riku shook his head lightly before slowly continuing with, "I'm her nephew."

"Cool! You here visiting for summer?"

"No." Riku shook his head again, this time even slower, his response even more hesitant, but still coming through in the same careless monotone. "My parents died."

"...Oh my god. ...Ohmigod, I'm so sorry." Kairi's mouth hung open for a few moments before her face was screwed up into an apologetic frown and the words started spilling out like nothing you've _ever _heard-- "Oh God, I feel like such a jerk now! I'm sorry, really. Listen, if you don't wanna talk about it, that's _so_ fine. That's totally fine by me. I'm so sorry." In quite the display of speed and (shockingly enough) silence, Kairi unwound herself from the porch rail and landed on the green of the lawn, spinning on her heel and hurriedly making for the low fence which Riku could only assume she'd come over in the first place.

"Are you leaving?" he asked.

Pausing, Kairi turned and tilted her head, studying Riku was a brief, calculating look before she offered him a small smile. "Um... no! Of course not. I was stretching my legs. Uh... You want me to stay? I'll stay! Hey, say, uh, this is great, huh? No one lives in this part of the neighborhood. At least, no one did. I used to have to trek all over with my bike just to hang out with someone! But this'll be cool, huh?"

With the girl back and dangling off the verdana rail, Riku couldn't help but half wonder if he'd really made the right decision in requesting her to stay. ...Well, sort of requesting her to stay. ...Or something like it.

"...You're totally ripped."

"...What?"

"You're _buff,_ Riku. You work out or something?" Riku winced as one slender little index finger jabbed at an innocent bicep, causing him to shrink away, causing her to smile, giggle, say, "The girls'll totally be all over you when school starts up. Yep, completely and totally aaall over you."

"Oh boy."

"Say, don't get weird about it, you goof. Tons of girls around here are prettier than me. Skinny and blonde and tan. You'll like them."

"What's wrong with you?"

"Huh?"

"There's nothing wrong with having red hair."

"I'd say there's nothing wrong with having silver hair, but then again, I've never seen anyone with silver hair, so I can't say. Is it naturally like that?"

"I guess so."

"You _guess_ so?"

Riku blinked at Kairi's laughter, tilted his head to one side and pursed his lips thoughtfully. _Either I've completely forgotten how to interact with other human beings, or this girl is just downright weird. ...Somehow, I have a hunch it's a little of both. Huh. Imagine that._ His brows drew together at the thought, his head shaking softly, his hair falling down around his eyes.

"Sorry," Riku mumbled. "Uh... my head kind of hurts. That's all."

Eyes widening as though the thought had just occurred to her, Kairi nodded understandingly, saying, "Hey, you're so pale and all, maybe you're not used to the sun. You should go inside."

"No! I mean... No, really, I... Fresh air's good."

Riku slumped back down into his sprawled position on the lawn-chair, heaving a sigh as the plastic scalded his back straight through his thin t-shirt. No good. Being branded by a piece of furniture was not high on Riku's list of things to do and he promptly began to fidget uncomfortably, trying to cool off somehow and failing miserably. Like it or not, Riku got a very clear view of Kairi's cleavage as she leaned forward earnestly-- and he suddenly felt the need to stare at the painfully cloudless sky.

"Shade?" Kairi suggested.

"Shade is good, too," Riku mumbled. Between the two of them, they managed to maneuver the burning chair out of the sun and into the shade of the overhanging roof by the very side of the house. Riku sat back down, Kairi returned to her perch on the railing, clearly unfazed by the sun's rays.

And then there was silence. A big nasty old silence that reared its grisly head and pointedly reminded Riku of his inability to deal with strange people. Especially when he was unsure if their company was of their own willingness or of their own sympathy. 'Let's go hang with the kid with dead parents! He's bound to be loads of fun!' It was a disturbing thought that Riku tried to lock away in the closet of his brain.

"You really had it rough, huh?" Kairi asked, turning the metaphorical key and safely tucking Silence in the metaphorical closet. Riku was grateful. But he still said nothing, still focused on his hands, woven together by his fingers in his lap. Her voice came again: "Hey, it's okay. You don't have to say anything. Sorry if I made you uncomfortable."

"It's okay."

"You want some Tylenol or something? For your headache? Hm, I hope you're not getting a heat stroke or anything. I don't remember what you're supposed to do if you get a heat stroke."

"It's _not _a heat stroke. I'm okay."

Pointedly ignoring this comment, Kairi looked towards the open kitchen window. "_He-ey! _ Mayako!" she called out. Strangely enough, Riku's aunt appeared, knobby elbows resting on the window sill, graying hair pulled back into a loose and messy bun. Riku thought she even looked a little bit... _pleased_. The thought sort of scared him. He considered trying to lock it away, too, but then feared over-stuffing his (still metaphorical) mind-closet.

If the metaphorical hinges broke, what would he do then?

"Kairi! ...And Riku." Mayako added his name with a slight sneer, a slight drawl. "What can I do for you, Kairi?" Perky as possible when addressing the crazy neighbor. Riku was completely at a loss.

"Hey, how come you never introduced me to Riku here, huh?"

"I figured he'd introduce himself eventually. Which he obviously has."

"You have any Advil, Tylenol-- something like that?"

Mayako studied the pair of teenagers carefully for a moment before disappearing, only to return several seconds later, holding out her fisted hand with a simple, "Here you go, Kairi." Kairi eagerly skipped over towards the window, reaching up to take several small capsules from Mayako's outstretched hand. Riku just watched on in silence.

"Thanks!"

Mayako nodded, turned away from the window, and vanished once more into the cool darkness of the house. Next thing Riku knew, a pair of bright little pills was dropped into his hand, the sweat on his palm making them sticky, ready to dissolve. Pills, pills, more pills. Enough to make Riku sick. But, perfectly oblivious, Kairi busied herself by walking over towards the hose in the backyard, rolling it out while explaining, "May's a raging feminist, didn't you know? She can't stand it if she thinks a guy's got a spine. Probably why her husband's such a tool."

"I think he's nice," Riku said, rolling the pills around his hand, trying to prevent them from liquifying in the heat and sweat. _Disgusting._

"Oh sure! He's nice, but he's a tool. He's a nice tool, you know? Hey, here." A spray of cool, fresh water shot out from the hose, bubbling up and over and covering Kairi's outstretched hand. She looked at Riku expectantly. Riku looked at her blankly. "...You're gonna take water with those, right?" she asked.

"...Oh. ...Water. ...Right."

Obediently, Riku popped the pills in his mouth, and held the hose away from him, placing his mouth by the little waterfall it made and drinking deeply. Surprisingly enough, he didn't gag or choke on the capsules like he normally did. And he couldn't help but feel slightly disappointed when the water was turned off and Kairi took the hose back to where it belonged.

Silence, take two. Riku made a mental note to find a way to craft himself into a properly sociable person. Clearly people in this town expected you to talk, no matter what sort of shit you were in. Things did not look too promising for Riku in his current state.

"Ahh... Wow, it's hot out here. Hey, too bad for you you missed the last day of school by just two weeks, huh? You could've met everyone."

"Yeah."

Kairi licked her lips and leant up against the railing, legs sticking out in front of her. She looked almost like the was studying them rather intently for a moment, but it was shattered as she tilted her head upwards, shooting Riku a small smile and a promise. "Hey, it'll be okay, you know?" Smile, smile, smile. "It's not the end of the world."

"You can't honestly say that, can you? You don't really know what's going on. You don't really know _me_."

"No, you're right. I don't know you at all, do I? So then. You're doomed. You're going to suffer forever and you're never going to be able to get over it. You'll spend the rest of your life sulking around like this. Forever and ever."

Mouth hanging just slightly ajar, it was all poor Riku could do to just stare blankly at his new neighbor before quietly questioning, "How can you _say_ that?"

"I didn't mean it. At least I know you're _alive_ in there."

"What are you talking about?"

Cupping her hands to her mouth, Kairi once again turned towards the kitchen window, calling out, "Mayako! He-ey, is it okay if I borrow Riku for a while? I wanna show him around!"

"You could've asked me first," Riku muttered. Either no one heard him or no one cared. Riku had a sneaking suspicion it was the latter.

"Sure thing, Kairi. Whatever you want," came his aunt's response. Riku could just barely make out her muttered addition of, "No sense, no sense at all," over the soft cling and clatter of glasses and plates. Mayako would undoubtedly be making lunch soon and there was little room for doubt in Riku's mind that his aunt wouldn't hesitate to eat without him. He'd probably be on his own for the meal, not that he really had a problem with it.

Dining with Mayako and her 'tool' of a husband hadn't exactly been a custom Riku had grown used to just yet.

But he was pulled out of his thoughts by an insistent tug on his arm and a pleading voice which said, "Come on! You gotta get up and moving if you're gonna get any better. No time for pouting around here!" Pulling harder, Kairi nearly had Riku halfway out of the lawn-chair, the boy precariously clinging to the metal. "Up ya go!"

"Get off me."

"Now, now, is that any way to talk to a lady?"

"You're no lady. You're some crazy viper demon trying to eat my soul."

"Yeah, well you're a soulless prick, so no soul for me to eat! Let's go!"

"I don't feel like going."

"I don't care, Riku Wataya." This was followed by a delighted little laugh which, under most circumstances that did not involve the prying of one from Position A to Position B, probably would have been quite charming in Riku's mind. "God, I just love saying that," Kairi continued. "Can't get enough of it. Riku Wataya. Riku Wataya. Go on, try it!"

"No."

"Riku Wataya."

"Knock it off."

"Riku Wa-tay-aaa."

"Fine! Riku Wataya! Now leave me alone!" Tug. Flop. "Whoa!" The two of them tottered on the edge of the wooden steps, Riku still holding on desperately to the lawn chair he'd dragged along with him, Kairi still holding on desperately to his arm. If there existed one snowflake for every ounce of desperation between Riku, Kairi, and the lawn-chair, it would be snowing in June and it wouldn't even be crazy. Desperate, desperate!

"Come on, you gonna make me break my back or what?" Kairi whined.

"What's _wrong_ with you?"

"You're perfectly miserable just sitting here all alone!"

"It's called _mourning_, dammit. I don't feel like going anywhere because I'm in fucking _pain_."

"Anger's good. Keep going."

"AUGH!"

"That's it! Rage!"

"What th-- Are you on _crack_?"

"Absolutely not! I believe in a strict 'hugs not drugs' policy. You do drugs?"

"**No**."

"Shame, I was looking forward to a big bear hug." Kairi let out a lighthearted little laugh that reminded Riku, oddly enough, of wind-chimes. For a thoroughly unpoetic person, Riku could only be surprised at himself. Surprised... and somewhat concerned.

"You're crazy."

"You're lazy. Get up now, we gotta move or Sora's gonna get in trouble!"

"_Sora_?"

"Yes, Sora! It'll be a great way for you to meet new people, Riku Wataya."

"Stop saying that."

"Well, what am I supposed to call you instead, huh? Pumpkinhead?"

"Do I_ look_ like a pumpkin to you?"

"No, you look like a total grouch."

Pressing frustrated fingertips to his temple, Riku let out a small ragged sigh before explaining tiredly, "Listen. Five hours ago, I was passed out on the floor from crying so much. I _don't _feel like talking. I _don't _feel like moving. I _don't _want to be here. And I _don't _want to go anywhere else."

"Please?"

"I said no."

Kairi caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she leaned against the rail once more. Riku stood there lamely, feeling strangely guilty, strangely cold. Strangely dead. The girl in front of him should've given up and beat it back home-- he didn't want to talk, he didn't want to be friendly. He wanted to--

"It's reeeally hot out here," Kairi said. "Your headache gone?"

"No." The snap was gone from the kid's voice, truly a kid as he curled in on himself. He didn't care what Kairi thought or if his creepy aunt was still spying on them from the kitchen window. He didn't want to hate all over this strange new girl, but he didn't know what she wanted. He felt awkward and misplaced, completely isolated and yet cornered at the same time. It was a scary thought, a big thought, too big to ever be truly rid of to ever pen up and hide away. No matter how big any non-existent mental closet could ever be.

Whether Kairi understood or not, Riku didn't know. But when she bent down again, all Riku saw was her tiny little hand, somewhere between the color of mocha and porcelain, outstretched and perfectly calm. Her voice was demanding when she said it, when she spoke. "Let's go now." But she smiled and that was what made it okay. Not that Riku saw it, but that he felt it through her fingertips as they slipped around his wrist.

"It'll be okay."

Don't fool yourself into thinking he believed her for a moment. But still. It was a start. A start he didn't truly understand, but a start nonetheless.

x x x

Riku had never before seen such a perfect, damn near model replica of middle-upper-class America. All that was missing was the 'Leave it to Beaver' theme song and a few "Gosh, golly, gee whizz, that'd be great!" shouts from the neighborhood kids. Riku had never seen anything so frightening in his entire life.

Yet amidst the picket-fence paradise strolled Kairi beside him, pointing out this, that and the other with the air of a distant tour guide running through a daily routine.

"And that's where Mr. Tigi lives-- we don't really know much about him, but he has a poodle we call Frou Frou. Well, we don't really know much about the poodle either, but no one really cares. The Koskis live next to him and they have two kids in elementary school-- really annoying little morons, if you ask me. There's Paine and Rikku... oh... hm, I can't remember their last names... Well, they live over there. They're the local lesbos-- total sweeties, the both of them-- though Paine would just as soon kill me for saying so..."

"Lesbos?"

"Uh, hell-o? Lesbians! Homosexual girls. Come on, Riku Wataya, even you aren't that spacey, are you?"

Riku merely blinked and shrugged. "This just doesn't seem like the kind of place where... uh, where that sort of... lifestyle would be so easily accepted. ...You know?"

Kairi seemed to find this terribly amusing, for as they reached the top of the gently sloping hill, she let out an airy little giggle and waved her hands around emphatically, saying, "It's the kids here more than the adults."

"Huh?"

"You know. The kids! Most of us are okay with it. It's weird. I mean, well... It's kind of like this. At our school, there are a lot of people who are firmly against homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality-- you get the picture. But if you really ask around, most kids are either quietly supportive or they really just don't care one way or the other."

"Really?"

"Really." Kairi's smile stretched into a broad grin and she opened her mouth as though to continue, but, after a moment, she closed it again, apparently having second thoughts. The rest of their walk continued in a peaceful silence only disturbed by the hum of lawn-mowers and the chirp of sprinkling systems, the neighborhood running like clockwork.

The girl finally seemed to reach her destination after crossing train tracks and dry creek-beds, roads busy and silent alike. They were in what appeared to be the back of a shopping center, the aroma of fast food hanging thickly in the air along with a very faint odor of old garbage. Quite pleasant really. But rather than stopping and taking time to explain, Kairi simply kept walking, right over to where an old school bus was parked. Frankly, Riku had no idea why the hell there was a school bus behind a shopping center during summer vacation. But he was either too disinterested or too lazy to ask, so really, it made little to no difference whatsoever.

What did make the difference was when Kairi leant against the bus, arms crossed, kicking her heel against the front wheel and calling out, "Sora, get out from under there, would you? Come on, there's someone I want you to meet!"

...Sora was under the bus? What the hell could...?

"Who?" came the muffled response. Riku cocked his head to the side-- it was a fairly delicate voice, but it sounded a bit mellow for a girl. _...Not that girls aren't mellow. It just sounds pleasant. Like bath water. Gee, that'll go over well. Telling the strange girl she has a voice like bath water. Way to make friends, Riku. Fucking loser._

Kairi, who remained (thankfully) oblivious to Riku's internal monologue, turned to him then and shot him a wink. "Oh, a certain _attractive_ neighbor of mine by the name of Riku Wataya," she said.

"Wataya? Japanese?" came the Bath Water Voice.

"Kind of."

"I'll meet him later."

"He's right _here, _Sora. Like. _Now_."

This seemed to provoke the response Kairi had been waiting for, seeing as an alarmed "Oh!" was quickly accompanied by a scuffle, a slam, and an, "Oww! Nuu... ah... uh..." Out popped some yellow sneakers, drawing out the tan legs, skinny torso and... alarmingly flat chest?

"Sorry there." Sora grinned, holding one hand over his eyes, looking up at Riku and wincing from the sunlight. Though Riku didn't know it then, that one split second in time, that one perfect picture sitting right there in front of him on the burning asphalt-- it would stay with him forever as his one lasting impression of Sora.

"..." _Sora's a guy. ...Sora's a **guy**_ ...Oh.

"Riku's living with Mayako," Kairi chirped, as though that one fact explained absolutely everything.

"_Ohh_... So that's where the Japanese comes in. ...May's really something else, huh? The original radical feminist-- crazy, but in a good way!" Sora laughed lightly, placing one hand behind his head and ruffling up his own already-mussed hairstyle. Whether it was a nervous gesture or whether he was checking to make sure the bruise on the back of his head wouldn't be too bad, Riku couldn't really tell. But he felt strangely relieved, somehow.

_Probably because there won't be so much sexual tension? Riku plus girls has never equalled much of anything other than annoyance or chaos. ...Then again, maybe I'm not being fair. ...Or maybe I'm just not... thinking? ...Headache. Fuck._

"Yeah... right..." Riku frowned softly, then realized what he was doing and screwed up his face to try and force it into a smile. "Uh... so..." What he got was some lopsided sort of thing that felt like it was stabbing his face with an ice-pick. "School bus?" he asked stupidly.

"Sora likes to pretend it'll roll over him someday." Kairi nodded sagely, tugging her skirt down and brushing her hair back over her shoulders.

"I do _not_."

"So why do you lie right under the tires, you goof?"

"It's cool under there. Quiet, too. Sometimes there are even cats!"

Rolling her eyes dramatically, Kairi wagged one slender finger beneath Sora's nose, her cheerful eyes narrowing slightly as she lectured, "Sora, Cid's totally gonna kill you if you don't get back to work. You _know_ how he is about you taking such a freaking long lunch break! You shouldn't get on his nerves so much-- you'll kill him _and_ his blood pressure, I swear."

Sora groaned in protest, mumbling and muttering as he hopped to his feet. Riku stood silently by while the two friends jabbed and jostled one another for a short moment, exchanging words that Riku couldn't make out and couldn't really care less about. He already felt like a third wheel-- no need to make it any worse by noticing the things flying right over his head. But as Sora disappeared inside, Riku felt a small hand pressing at his back and shoving him forward, Kairi's voice smoothly suggesting, "Riku, why don't you go check out the store, huh? You never know what you might find _interesting_ there."

And that was how he first entered the bookstore. Illegally. Through the back door which so clearly read 'Employee Entrance Only.'

Sora was nowhere to be found, but rather than hurry back out the way he'd been shoved in, Riku took several steps forward, quiet as could be. The shop smelled distinctly of cigarette smoke and dollar-store air-fresheners, yet Riku couldn't possibly bring himself to mind it once he came out of the back hallway and stood facing row upon row of worn, well-loved... well, books. Obviously. But there were more books there than Riku had ever seen crammed so tightly before-- from floor to ceiling, from shelf to shelf-- some precariously balanced, others just jam-packed in as close as could be.

Riku wasn't a die-hard lover of all things literary. But just walking through the aisles of the shop, he suddenly felt the urge to become one, to spend every last moment of his life curled up in the corner of that shop, reading every single word and making sense of all the things that all these people must have found so important. So important they just had to write about it. So important they just had to share their thoughts with someone, with anyone, with a total stranger who they might never ever meet, but who could be profoundly changed just by a few of their words.

He was flipping through a rather randomly selected book when he was finally found. But it wasn't by Sora.

"This isn't a fucking library, kid. You gonna buy it or what?"

"Ah..." Riku stared up into the face of a middle-aged man with brilliant blonde hair and enough of a scowl to frighten away a large pack of small children. But Riku was certainly no small child and he actually found he had half a mind to make a rather rude retort before returning to reading. However, before he could even get that far, the familiar little brunette appeared at the end of the aisle, a curious little look upon his face.

Riku stared at Sora.

Sora stared at Riku.

And then Sora promptly dumped his entire armload of books on the ground with a loud _CRASH_!

Wheeling around, the man cursed and swore and flung his arms around, hollering, "What the--? Fuckin' brat! What the hell're you thinkin'?"

"Sorry, Cid! I'll clean it up!" Sora grinned sheepishly as Cid glowered and stomped off towards the front of the shop, his attention obviously dragged away from the silver-haired teen who still held that one book in his hands. After gathering his stack of books back together, Sora threw Riku that impressive smile once more, saying, "Don't let Cid freak you out. You can keep looking, you know. Do you like Kerouac?"

"Yeah."

Looking at the book in his hands, Riku smiled. Not so randomly selected after all, it seemed. 'On The Road' was only the beatnik Bible of the sixties. While Riku himself was no beatnik, there was something about that era, about that lifestyle which just drew him in.

"He's one romantic helluva guy. ...You know, I mean, I mean his ideas! His ideas, the stuff he writes about... Crazy beatnik." Sora laughed loudly, but there was a trace of something else in it-- nervousness? Riku could only smile slowly, watching the smaller boy draw closer, feeling the tips of his mussy hair graze over the back of his hand, Sora bending over Riku's arms as he reached for a book below them.

._..Getting a little out of control with the bullshit observations there, Riku. Time to cool it down a little._

"Alan Watts?" suggested Sora.

"Who?"

Sora tapped the one temple with his index finger, a small smile settling across his pouty lips. "The stuff in your head," he said. "...And elsewhere. He's good-- probably a major stoner, but if it works, it works, right? It's good, I promise. Makes you think. Gives your brain some exercise."

"Well, my brain could definitely use it."

"Well, the _rest_ of you doesn't need it. You work out or something?" _Damn, what's with these people? You'd think they'd never seen a guy work out at a gym before or something. Not that you can tell by looking at them. Crazy naturally beautiful people..._

"I used to."

"Used to..." Sora seemed to mull this over for a moment, his lips mouthing those two words several times over as his fingers played thoughtfully across his smooth and slender little chin. Looking up, he asked, "Play any sports?"

"No."

"Play any instruments?"

"No."

"Starving artist?"

"No."

"Rebel without a cause?"

"No."

"...Impressive intellect? Misunderstood genius? Subdued super-hero?"

"...No, no, and no."

Hands flying about his face in some random gesture, Sora laughed loudly, sweetly, and, Riku decided, most _un_-nervously. "Man, if you were any sort of polite, you'd ask me about myself. Not everyone is always going to want to talk about you, right?" Sora winked-- he actually dropped one eyelid and_ winked_ at Riku, forcing his books into the boy's dazed arms before grabbing ahold of one of them and leading him around the aisles of the shop with nothing more than two simple instructions. "Here, take these. Come on!"

_Wait a minute, 'if you were any sort of polite...' Sora thinks I'm being impolite? Or self-centered? Or something? Like hell! I'm one fucking excellent conversationalist when I want to be. Little weasel. Little spiky-haired weasel boy. ...With cute little whiskers and paws? GAH. Focus!_

"...Sora, right?"

"Sounds _great _the way you say it. Good start, man."

Mouth hanging open, Riku was clearly caught off-guard by_ that_ comment. Thankfully, Sora had apparently hauled them to where he had in mind, for his hand promptly released Riku's arm and began tracing the spines of countless books as Sora searched. Thankfully, he couldn't see Riku swallow thickly and try to erase the slight blush from his face. "So... what sort of... music do you listen to, Sora?" Riku asked, praying that his voice would crack or do something equally idiotic.

"Everything. I don't limit myself. If I hear pop and I like pop, I like pop. Jazz, country, indie, rock, alternative, emo, techno-- who cares. Music's music and it makes people feel, don't you think?" Smile, smile, smile. It was too bright to handle and Riku could only look away.

"I guess so," he replied.

"You _guess_ so?"

"You sound a lot like that girl... Kairi," Riku said with a small smile.

"Kairi? You like her?" Sora was facing the books again-- Riku couldn't get a good look at his face. _ Let's see. How to approach that question..._

"Like... like how?"

"I could hook you guys up if you wanted."

"No, that's okay." It was Riku's turn to laugh nervously, but he had the sinking feeling that his was more obvious and painfully less cute than Sora's had been. So he quickly shut himself up and let thoughts rattle around his own head as Sora appeared busy, every once in a while snagging a book or two from Riku's arms and tucking it here or there within the mighty shelves before them.

"Kairi and I grew up together. We were born two months apart-- she's older than I am and never lets me forget it. Ever since, we've been like this." Sora held his middle and index fingers up, curled one against the other, saying, "Kinda cool, right?"

"Yeah, I gue-- I mean, yeah."

Sora's mouth curled into a playful little smile as he elbowed Riku gently, taking the last book from his hands and tossing it between his own two. "She's really important to me, so don't go being mean to her, got it? I just might have to beat you up! Hah!" At this, Sora lightly batted Riku's arm with the back of his hand, laughing alllll the while. ...Riku couldn't see what was quite so funny, so he just sort of stood there. And stared. ...And felt increasingly awkward.

"Come on, Riku, it was a joke. Laugh a little, already!"

"But what's so funny?"

"Ohhh, Kairi didn't tell you. Weird. She's usually always ragging on me about it." Mouth puckering into a thoughtful little frown, Sora went silent for about half a second before waggling his fingers playfully and spinning off to the side, finally shelving the very last book. "There's no way I'd ever beat you up. Trust me."

"Why's that?"

"Why should you trust me or why wouldn't I beat you up?"

"...Either?"

"Well, you should _trust_ me because I trust you. You seem like a trustworthy kinda guy! A little bit of a hard-ass, yeah, buuut--" Sora burst into that delighted laughter again before holding up both hands and saying, "Kidding, kidding, I swear!"

"Ri-ight."

"Hm. Something's just not right with you, you know?" Sora bent over slightly, peering up at Riku with his hands tucked behind his waist. There it was again, that action that so closely pinned Kairi and Sora together. Kairi had done the exact same thing when trying to bend Riku to her will! Riku knew it! ...The sad thing was, as much as he knew it, he was still thoroughly unprepared when Sora's tan little hands reached up towards his face and attacked his cheeks, pulling his mouth into a crazy sort of a grin. "There we go! Now hold it, just like that. Look at your feet for inspiration if you've got to, for crying out loud!"

"Huh?"

"Your _shoelaces_, Riku."

"Oh." He looked down at those colorful smiley laces and he had a strange sort of feeling he'd done it before-- for indeed he had, many, many times before. _ You keep my shoes on my feet, laces._

"You know, I bet you're really an amazing person once you get past all the stuff outside yourself. Maybe you've bulked up so much you're suffocating your heart in all of it. And I _don't _just mean bulking up your body. It's something else." Sora's smile faded then, just ever so slightly. Riku wasn't sure he'd ever seen something so sad before, and that was just one more thought in a sea of the thousands that scared him.

...And then there was silence.

"..."

"..."

Sora hooked his fingers inside his lips and stretched his mouth wide, tongue dangling out. "Nya-aaa-aaah!" And of course, Riku could only chuckle. "Phew. You _are_ human! You had me worried." Sora grinned again as he said it, and all earlier sadness was wiped clean from his face and the cheerful expression he held there.

"So... if I wanted to buy a book..." Riku started.

"I'll hook you up, Riku! Nooo problem!"

"How would you know what I want?"

"I wouldn't. I'd guess. As I'll do riiight now!"

"You know all these books?"

"Heck no! I read, but I don't read_ that_ much. I try and avoid the classics like the plague because they're just so _boring_, you know? Modern's best, but don't tell Kai I said so. She's a big ol' 'Pride and Prejudice' fan."

"Oh."

"Try this one." Sora flipped a book into Riku's hands, leaving the taller boy to flip it over, to trace his fingertips over the cover.

"...'The Elephant Vanishes'?" he asked.

"Short stories. You know, even if you're not a big reader or anything, you can still get something out of these because it doesn't take to long too finish them, you know?"

"I can _read_ just fine."

"I can tell. You're every living, breathing anti-hero."

"Hardly."

"Say, I gotta get back to work or Cid'll really get pissed. You hungry?"

"Um?"

"Here!" Having led Riku to the front check-out of the store, Sora pulled out a small brown paper sack from behind the counter, your everyday lunch bag, in Riku's book. "It's nothing but lettuce, tomato, cucumber, and a little bit of dressing. Kinda like a salad sandwich. But I promise it's good when it's hot out like this."

"But it's yours."

"Actually, it's Kairi's. She always makes me lunch in the mornings. I don't want it today though, so it's yours! Eat up, man. You look starved. Besides, if I know Mayako, she didn't wait up for you, right?"

"Probably not." Riku tried his best to offer Sora a smile of his own, but it still felt faulty. So instead he settled for standing there, brown bag in one hand, book in the other.

"Hey, two bucks for the book, Riku. Not gonna give you that much slack, even if you are new."

And Sora laughed. And Riku laughed. And for a split second, maybe they were both perfectly normal.

"Thanks. Er. For the sandwich and the book," Riku said, sliding two dollars across the countertop. He couldn't help but notice Sora's fingernails were perfectly clean, perfectly trimmed. Perfectly girly in every way.

"Any time! Well, the book part. Trust me, that sandwich bit? Yeah. Never gonna happen again." Sora turned towards the front of the store and raised a hand to someone through the display window-- only then did Riku notice Kairi leant up against a concrete pillar, clearly waiting outside for him. Shooting Sora another half-assed smile, Riku made a beeline for the door, only stopped by Sora's voice ringing out once more behind him. "Oh, and Riku! One more thing!"

"Hm?"

"You gotta smile more, man. Your world's not over."

"...You people just love saying that, don't you?"

"Something like that, yeah!"

Some time later, Riku and Kairi were back on the porch, back beneath the sun, both of them splitting the sandwich that had been meant for Sora. If Kairi was at all put-off by the fact that Sora had just up and given her carefully crafted sandwich away, she didn't show it. Instead, she just studied Riku closely in between their snippets of conversation, thinking her own deep thoughts while Riku was lost in his.

(x) (x) (x)

_Stress cardiomyopathy: Remember that big hooplah back in February when it was said that you could really die from a broken heart? This is that medical condition-- far more common in females than in males, but Riku's girly enough to pass off, I think. To save you a fair amount of Google-ing, stress cardiomyopathy is a stress induced disorder thing that basically gives people 'heart attacks,' but is obviously due to stress, trauma, or grief-- not clogged arteries._

I haven't forgotten any of my other fics, of course! This is just my special warm-weath-inspired-whatchamacallit. Sooo.

Like it, hate it, want to burn it? Lemme know!


	2. Thinking Underage

**Suburbia**

'Thinking Underage'

Riku's mind was conscious, but the kid was still fighting it for all he was worth. He wished he was still tired. It would make rolling over just that much easier. It would make ignoring the rain just that... much... easier...

_It's been doing that for hours. It never rained this long back home. Just nice, quick summer showers. In, out, and done. Like good sex. Mmm. Lost in happy thoughts. Maybe I'm floating out my window... into the rain... yep. Happy thoughts gone._

Groaning and grumbling all the while, Riku rolled over onto his side and took a nice long moment to appreciate the wall across from his face. Some mornings there are moments when you look to see who it is you wake up beside and all you come to find is a wall very much like Riku's. And sometimes that's perfectly fine. ...And sometimes it's not.

This was one of those 'not' times.

Feeling thoroughly lonely and dejected for reasons he could neither understand nor explain, Riku then shuffled downstairs in a baggy pair of sweatpants and an oversized black t-shirt which so diligently reported: 'It's not raining-- my ninja monkeys are pelting you with poo.' How fitting. Yet no sooner had Riku sat down to his bowl of tasteless Wheaties than there came a knocking at his door. ...For the record, however, it was not his chamber door. ...It wasn't even truly 'his' door at all.

_So it makes no sense for me to be thinking 'Quote the raven: nevermore!' Good lord, I'm a freak. I need to just give up and go back to bed._

But that knocking was damn persistent-- like no other knocking Riku had ever had the misfortune of hearing before. After several moments of knock, knock, knocking, he finally decided that maybe, just maybe he could answer the door. Just this once. And so he did.

"Morning, sleepyhead! Boy, you sure do laze around a lot, huh?"

"...It's only nine thirty."

Kairi's hair was pulled into two French braids, each tied at the end with matching white-spotted blue ribbons. Only Kairi, however, could have pulled the look off with a dark blue tube top and ripped up jeans. As Riku began to silently wonder if the girl owned a piece of clothing that didn't have some sort of distressed look to it, Kairi spoke again, her voice hauling his eyes away from the giant holes at the knees of her pants.

"I've only been up for _four hours_! Oh, Riku Wataya, you're so la-azy. But that can be fixed! What do you say you come hang with Sora and me tonight? I'm making us dinner over at my place since his parents are off celebrating their anniversary in some sleepy little bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere. It'll be good, I promise!"

Riku blinked. "You can cook?"

Looking slightly miffed, Kairi crossed her arms over one another, brushing past Riku and elegantly propping herself up against the wall beside the door, rainwater dripping down off her torso and onto the mat below. "Hey, I made that sandwich you ate yesterday and you've lived to tell the tale. That's got to mean something to you, right?" Kairi covered her mouth with one hand as she laughed a little, then added, "No, seriously though. I make dinner every night."

"Really?"

"Would I lie to you?"

"...I'm not actually sure."

"...Oh." The girl screwed up her cute little face into an angry pout, knocking the heel of one foot against the toe of the other in frustration. "Well gee, that's kinda hurtful!"

"Sorry," Riku said with a shrug. ...Now_ you_ know and _I _know that he wasn't _actually_ sorry. But just like there are times when you wake up to a blank old wall, there are also times when you can B.S. your way out of anything just by saying you're sorry.

In Riku's defense (and in yours as well, I'm sure), it's not lying. It's just exaggerating. ...A lot.

Remaining delightfully uninformed of the rules behind the English 'sorry,' Kairi plowed on obliviously with a sweetened wink and a perky thumbs up, and then flipped one braid over her shoulder. "You can make it up to me by hanging out with us this evening. So what do you say?" she asked.

"Uh... I guess so. Are you sure Sora won't mind?"

"Sora? _Mind?_ Get real! He thinks you're_ totally_ cool, trust me."

"I doubt he said that."

"You'd be surpri-ised what can come out of that cute 'lil mouth of his!"

"...Um?"

"Never you mind, Riku Wataya! The important thing is that we get you out of the house and socializing with people. You _have_ to work on your social skills. How long have you kept yourself cooped up in this house anyhow?"

"Since I got here...? About... uh, two weeks or so." _Two weeks. Maybe I'm in purgatory and the devil forgot to tell me. Or I missed the telegram. Didn't get the memo. The spiritual computer ate my email! Help me, God! ...This is not a good day. This is not a good day. Two weeks. Two weeks..._

"Two weeks? Two _weeks_? ...Wow, you're as nutty as they come. And I mean that in the best possible way." Riku could only agree with her on that part. Not that he said anything, of course. No, he just stood there awkwardly and shrugged one shoulder, nodding his head slightly and only looking up when Kairi spoke again, tilting her head to one side and pointing past him, in towards the kitchen. There were his Wheaties, getting lukewarm and soggy, right beside--

"Say, that's the book you got from the shop yesterday, isn't it? How do you like it?"

Riku followed Kairi into the kitchen, where the girl proceeded to pull out a chair and perch on the edge, the movement actually striking Riku as being quite graceful. How such a strange and quirky girl managed to still be graceful, Riku didn't really know. But he was just having one of those weird days, after all. _It could be raining pandas and I would probably just say, 'Hm, wonder if there'll be a rainbow afterwards.' What. A. Freak._

Shaking his head slightly, Riku tried desperately to get whatever tick his brain had out of there. He picked up the book, ran his fingertips along the spine, finally coming back to the world and its questions and Kairi's silent, sweet stare. "It's... actually, it's good. Uh... A little weird at parts. Not in a bad way, I mean. Quirky. Depressing. _Different_, you know? I can't really... describe it," Riku said. He frowned slightly at his own words before thumbing through the pages and coming to the one he was looking for, holding it out towards the girl with a single nod. "This one's good."

Taking the book in hand, a slow smile stretched across Kairi's face, a fine little red eyebrow arching as she read, "'On Seeing the One-Hundred Percent Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning.' Aww, Mr. Muscles has a soft side!"

"Don't call me that."

She licked the tip of her thumb and tucked the corner of the page between two fingers. She leant back in her seat, she parted her lips, and to no one's surprise, I'm sure, she began to read... "'One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harajuku neighborhood, I walk past the one-hundred percent perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that good-looking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep...'"

And Kairi went on from there. Riku was content to sit for a while, just listening and doing nothing else. His head drooped off to one side, fell onto his curled arms, neck bent just so as he closed his eyes and listened, listened, listened. Listened to Kairi talk about a chance meeting taken advantage of-- the perfect boy and the perfect girl who just had to test their limits and just had to try and prove their perfection by walking away from one another. _...What absolute idiots._

But it was okay. Kairi had a nice reading voice, really. It wasn't forced, it wasn't fake. It was brutally honest, fresh and... chaste, somehow. Riku just couldn't think of the words. But it made him calm, it made him collected, and for just a moment he could forget about the time and the pills and the heart and the wheel that put it all in motion...

But then she stopped.

"Riku... that was... sad," Kairi murmured.

"Yeah, I know."

"You shouldn't read sad stuff like that."

"Why the hell not?"

"Come on, this is just going to make you feel worse. What about... um... er. 'The Second Bakery Attack'?" Kairi was flipping through the pages looking for something-- _anything_ more promising, more uplifting than a failed romance, a failed perfection all gone wrong and all gone to waste. And Riku just shrugged the effort off with a shake of the head, a quirk of the mouth.

"I read it. It was good-- funny and all that. But I dunno. I still liked the other one," he said.

"Depressing."

Riku smirked. "Terribly so."

"Are the rest of his stories sad like that?"

Having figured that his Wheaties were beyond saving, Riku had gotten up to wash out the bowl, turning on the disposal the running the tap and arming himself with the sponge. He didn't bother turning back around to face Kairi; he just scrubbed away, spending more time cleaning the bowl that was probably necessary in the first place. "How should I know? I only just started. Sora was the one who picked it out for me."

"Stupid Sora..." Kairi heaved a dramatic little sigh, arms flung outwardsand head tilted back in her chair, now viewing Riku from upside down. He just blinked at her, drying off his hands, leaning against the counter. Blink, blink, blink. Stare, stare, stare. "Hey, but, uh. How come you like that story so much if it's so sad?" the girl asked.

"Because." Riku allowed that explanation to hang in the air for a moment, but after looking at Kairi's expression, he could easily tell that just that word alone wasn't going to fly. So he shrugged and simply tacked on a lame "It's true."

"What is?"

"Well, I think it'd be a real miracle if anyone ever did encounter their perfect other half. For two people out of billions to find one another and fit together that perfectly? I mean, _one hundred_ percent perfectly? Yeah. Not really likely. At _all._ Like the author says."

Jerking her head back upright, Kairi turned around in her chair to fully face Riku, her eyes wide and shimmering with something that looked strangely like worry. "But that's awful!" she whined.

"That's life."

"Yeah, well I disagree. I think that if two people work _hard_ enough at a relationship, they can grow to be perfect for one another over time. So what do you have to say to _that,_ huh?"

"Whatever. You can think what you want. Not like I'm gonna stop you."

"You're _horrible_ at arguing, you know that?" Elbows resting on the back of the chair, Kairi held up one index finger, waving back and forth while she chided, "As a kid, you should be thinking happy, optimistic thoughts about love."

"Yeah right."

"I'm serious! All this pessimism can't be good for your heart, Riku Wataya."

_Good for my heart...?_ Riku froze where he was, back rigid, brows furrowed. _There's no way she could... I didn't say anything about..._

"How'd you...? Did Mayako tell you?" Riku asked quietly. He still stood with his back to the girl, afraid of turning around and finding her pitying all over him. That was the last thing he needed-- more pity. More pity only led to self pity and self pity only led to chest pains and hospitals, medication and nullification and... everything Riku didn't want.

But Kairi didn't get it. She just blinked. She just tilted her head ever so slightly and filled the silence with one more question. "Tell me what?"

_She doesn't know? ...She really doesn't know._ "Ah... Nothing. Nevermind."

"Whoa, whoa, hey, did May tell me what?"

_She doesn't know and she doesn't have to know. _ "It's nothing."

"It's something." Kairi leaned forward, bracing her weight on the back of the chair, a curious smile playing across her face as she continued, "There's something you're hiding, Riku... I wonder what it could beee."

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"I'm hiding nothing."

Curiosity turned to amusement in the span of a second. "You know, when girls lie, you can always tell because their pupils get just a little wider as they say it. As they fib. You're not a girl, but I still know you're lying. God's gift to women is our amazing intuition."

And in the span of the next second, Riku almost felt a little intimidated. Almost. But God's gift to Riku was his amazingly dense skull and occasionally narrow mind, both of which were wonderful defense mechanisms if used the right way. "Your amazing intuition and your amazing ability to annoy."

"That too."

The two of them exchanged something of a smile, a little awkward in Riku's mind, but still better than he'd been doing yesterday. Surely if he built up his facial muscles enough, he'd be able to pull off a convincing smile one day. ...But not that day. And he soon wiped the expression from his face with the twitch of his mouth, focusing on the floor, even when Kairi broke the silence yet again. The tips of her sneakers came into view and he could just make out the beginnings of her shadow from the corner of his eye. For some reason, it struck him as a particularly small shadow. But then the thought and the realization were gone.

Kairi's hand rested gently, cautiously on his shoulder in a small half-pat, her voice quiet but uplifting. "Hey, you might not trust me now, but just you wait, Riku. I'm all you've got in this town-- well, me 'n Sora. And you know why we're all you've got? Because you're afraid to go out and make new friends!"

"That's not true."

"Oh reeeally?"

"If I wanted to--"

"But you _don't _want to. That's just it. You'd rather be indoors reading about perfect girls and perfect boys whose lives just don't work out."

"Like you'd know."

"Don't get mad, now."

"I'm not mad."

Kairi pulled away just a moment before Riku heard the laundry basement door open, Mayako bustling on out with a large basket full of laundry cradled in her arms. Upon seeing Kairi, she shot the girl a toothy grin, easily returned with Kairi's own warm and cheerful smile. ...And to Riku his aunt gave a sharp nod. That was about that. Oh, but wait! There was a vocal accompaniment, too!

"Good morning, Kairi!" The jerk of a head in the general direction of a cabinet, the scuff of the heel and the click of the basement door. "Riku, medicine."

_So much for Kairi not knowing anything. Now there'll just be no escaping it. Fuck. I wish it **was **raining fucking pandas. Anything would be better than this. _ "...Right."

And sure enough, just as Mayako rounded the corner and disappeared into the adjacent hallway, Kairi was all over that one snippet of conversation, hovering over Riku's shoulder as he trekked over to the medicine cabinet and half-heartedly swung it on open. "Medicine? You sick?" she prompted. Questions, questions, questions...

"It's nothing." _One, two, three, four, five fucking pills. Come on sky, give me some giant pandas and that'll be distraction enough. Big, giant, fat pandas that'll break a window or something._

"Lot of pills for it to be nothing."

"Would you mind your own business already?" Riku growled, turning sharply away from Kairi and closing one fist around the set of capsules, the other hand busy setting bottles back inside the cave of the cabinet. He took his time, hoping that maybe his anger would scare Kairi off. But no, he wasn't quite that lucky. There came a gentle tap on his shoulder and when he did get to turning around, she was still there, holding a glass in one hand and a smile on her face.

"...Here," she said, tucking the glass inside Riku's hand. "I think it's easier to take medicine when you drink something thicker than water. Like milk. Milk's good for you. Keeps your bones good and strong, right?"

"...Right." _...Milk?_

Watching quietly as Riku downed his pills, Kairi tucked her arms behind her back and put up that smile of hers again. She and Sora really were two peas in a freaking pod after all-- their mannerisms were almost eerily similar sometimes. "Well, I just wanted to swing by and make sure you could hang out tonight. Don't forget, okay? Be over at seven and I'll make us some dinner and we'll all watch a movie or something."

"Okay..."

"Riku?" She was halfway through the doorway, one hand resting on the knob, one hand resting on the frame. "It's nothing serious, is it?"

"...Is what?"

"...Nevermind." And she smiled kind of sweetly then, head tilted to one side, trying to brush it off as what Riku claimed it to be. Nothing. "Seven o' clock! Don't forget!"

"I won't."

x x x

_"Riku..."_

_"Uh, hey man."_

_"Riku, we were so worried..."_

_"You had us all really freaked out."_

_"Are you feeling okay? Do you need another pillow? Some juice, maybe? The doctor said..."_

_"...said you'll probably be okay for summer practice, but that he wants to..."_

_"We ran some tests, Riku, but... I'm afraid we..."_

_"...don't understand what's wrong with you, man! I mean, you were fucking **fine**, weren't you? You said you were fucking fine. You were laughing along just like the rest of us. I thought you'd fucking pull..."_

_"...through the heart, but it doesn't work. The heart develops a sort of, well, **lopsided** shape and it makes it weaker, less efficient. It can be quite..."_

_"...fatal..."_

_You guys fucking abandoned me. I needed you and you gave up... You just gave up on me. Just like that. I know I can be a pain in the ass, but come on now. ...I **needed** you. I needed you there for me and you weren't. You were out training. You were out painting. You were out trying to find a replacement, another star player, another gay best buddy to take my spot after I kicked the bucket. Just like my 'rents. Just like my fucking 'rents. I'm going to die just like them, aren't I? Just another freak accident._

_Oww..._

_Fuck._

_It sort of hurts, you know?_

x x x

With one fist stacked on top of the other, Sora rested his chin nice and neat on top of his little hands. The kid was stretched across the only rug in the room, somehow managing to spread himself out at such an angle that he occupied the entire rug, staring up at the TV with a bored expression scrawled carefully across his face. "_And now you've got to make sure that you fold these egg whites in nice and easy or else your pudding won't set right! Remember, we want that creamy lemon filling to be a nice contrast-- light and fluffy, rich and creamy..._"

Kairi's living room itself had a pleasant feel to it, a nice, clean and airy feel that almost felt a little _too_... well, nice, clean and airy. Borderline sterile, really. Everything in the room-- every picture, coaster, lamp, shelf and sofa-- was coordinated perfectly with the oriental rug, shining blue, gold and white in color. ...Upon which Sora _still_ lay, little red t-shirt and torn green shorts galore. What a god-awful clash.

"Kairiii, I'm hungryyy."

"That's what you get for watching the Food Network, Sora. Honestly." Ignoring Sora's defeated little whimper, Kairi turned to Riku with the pleasant smile of the perfect hostess and said, "Why don't you go on in with Sora? Dinner'll be ready soon, I promise!"

"Uh, don't you need help or something?"

Laughing, Kairi waved one hand dismissively, already on her way to the kitchen. "You'd just get in the way! I can handle it, trust me."

_Everyone here keeps saying that. Trust me, trust me, trust me. ...Is it really such a damn crime if I **don't**? _

"Hey Riku!" Sora's voice pulled him back, turned him around, guilted him up-- _Didn't Sora say he trusted me yesterday?_ "Come on!" The smaller boy scooted over on the rug and flung out one arm, patting the newly freed space beside him.

"You have something against chairs?" Riku jeered, making his way over to a crisp white sofa instead.

Sora watched him move, baby blues centered right between the other boy's shoulder blades. Had Riku turned around at that moment, that one opportune little moment, he probably would have caught a glimpse of something similar to intrigue behind the blue. As it was, Sora shook his head, dropped his bottom lip into a pout, and simply retorted, "You have something against_ me_?"

Once again, pulled back, turned around and guilted up. Riku's mouth hung open quite helplessly, but, unable to think of anything to say, he retraced his steps and sat down beside the brunette. The kid did indeed look quite pleased with himself, a satisfied grin settling across his adorable features as he propped his chin up on his fists once more.

"Sooo, Riku! Where'd you come from?"

_Oh no, here we go again... _

"Uhh. ...This... island chain."

"Well that's real specific. Treasure Island? You know Blue Beard the Pirate? Or maybe it was Captain Jack. Black Beard...? Who_ever_ it was, he's a reeeal good friend of mine. Oooh, or maybe it was where the wild things are." Sora's grin took on an almost predatory gleam to it, causing Riku's eyes to widen and his face to turn just a little warmer, just a shade pinker. _Oh get real. God, Riku. You are one pathetic son of a bitch. Why not start giggling like a goddamn schoolgirl while you're at it? Good lord._

Either completely oblivious or completely unmerciful, Sora continued. "You know that book, right? Where the Wild Things Are? Heehee, are you a wild thing, Riku? You look kinda crazy, you know? Crazy colored eyes and silver hair. Are you for real or not?"

"I'm real." Riku said it. ...He didn't know why he said it and he most certainly didn't know why he felt a frightening, painful little tug in the pit of his chest when he _did_ say it. But there it was and Sora could take it and twist it in whatever way he wanted.

Yet Sora just cocked his head to one side thoughtfully and pursed his lips. He seemed to take that fact and pick it up for a second, turn it around in the light a few times and then tuck it away safely before nodding once. "Yeah," he said. "Okay, I'll buy that. But other than you being real, I dunno much about you. You're like one of those typical mysterious guys in the black cloaks with the dark past and the murky future. Gloom and doom. Ugh. Come on, man, you gotta give me more than that."

"There isn't anything..."

"La, la, la, liiie!"

"Seriously. It's boring."

"Then bore me to death. It can't be worse than watching this woman make pudding. That doesn't even _look_ like pudding. Does that look like pudding to you, Riku?"

"Well... no."

"_Exactly_. So your life can't be any worse than fake pudding."

"That doesn't exactly say much."

"Trust me. It does. So spill."

"Muscle... uh... spasms. They don't work right sometimes. And it hurts. ...Sort of." _Technically, that's not a lie. It's just a misleading truth. The heart is a muscle. And it's not working right. There we go. I'm in the clear. Guilt-free, no problems here. And he can tell Kairi and they can just go right on ahead and believe that if they want. _

"Side effect of being so strong and bulky, huh? You stretch yourself too far and your body doesn't like it." And just when Riku thought he truly was in the clear, Sora fixed him with a look. It wasn't quite like any look Riku had ever seen before. It wasn't a look that said 'I trust you, baby! You keep talking!' and it wasn't a look that said 'You little lying fuck, I expected better from you.' ...No, this look was simply was of... 'All I can do right now is look at you like this and hope you get the message. I don't know you and you don't know me, but I want to and I'm trying to and you're shutting me out. Knock it off. Pretty please?'

And this was then backed up with Sora's sly little statement of, "You should go easy on it for a while. Maybe try _lying_ down some."

_Lying! ...Why do I get the feeling this kid just **knows**?_

Thankfully, Kairi picked that exact moment to pop back into the living room, carrying a pretty little platter piled with sliced carrots and celery sticks, cucumbers and tomatoes-- all ringed around a neat dish of vegetable dip. "Hey guys, I brought veggies!" ...As though her actions really needed explaining.

"Mmm, rabbit food!"

"Shut up, you goof. The pasta's not ready yet." Pulling the platter well out of reach of Sora's outstretched hands, Kairi turned up her perfect nose and sniffed, "Or do you just want me to take_ this_ back in with me, hm? I can give it all to Riku, maybe. Then you can just starve!"

"Mercy, mercy, jee-eeze. You wouldn't let me starve, Kai!"

"Keep talking like that and just you watch!" Still, she caved like Sora knew she would, handing him the platter with a shake of her head and the flip of one braid over her shoulder. Just like that she was gone again.

Riku's mind was somewhere picking daisies in left field when he noticed a rather peculiar little orange pile of matter developing on his plate. And that was when he caught sight of Sora's scheme, his brilliant delivery, his-- "What are you doing?"

"Giving you my carrots."

"...Why?"

"Carrots are good for you. I'm sure your spastic muscles'll like 'em!"

"Ye-eah. About that..."

"Let's play a little game, Riku! Whaddya say? Just until Kairi gets back, m'kay?" Not waiting for a response, Sora popped a cherry tomato in his mouth with obvious cheer, chewing and swallowing before continuing, "One of us'll say something-- a fact. Only it can be false. Or it can be true. True, false, got it? And the other person has to guess which one it is."

_"There's something you're hiding, Riku... I wonder what it could be."_

_"Nothing."_

_"Nothing?"_

_"I'm hiding nothing."_

_"You know, when girls lie, you can always tell because their pupils get just a little wider than they would if they told the truth. You're not a girl, but I still know you're lying. God's gift to women is our amazing intuition."_

_...Between the two of them, these kids are going to kill me._

"Okay..."

"You go first. Say something."

"...I really like the book you picked out. 'The Elephant Vanishes.'"

"Heh. _That's _a truth. Easy. Okay. Here's miiine... My cell phone ring is The Beatles' song, _Blackbird_."

"Um..." _Oh, actually know that song! ...And it's so not Sora. Get real_. "False?"

"Wrong. That's the truth! Your turn."

"Right... Well... I'm left handed."

"Liar. Come on, try a little harder! My turn. I know my times tables up to twenty three."

"Uh. Lie?"

"No! I _do_, Riku. Twenty three times eight is one hundred and eighty four. Twenty three times eleven is two hundred and fifty three." And Sora managed to do it all without even batting an eyelid. Impressive. In fact, it was so impressive, that was all Riku found himself capable of saying. So he said it.

"Impressive."

"I hate math."

"Uh, is_ that_ a lie?"

"Nooo, that was the truth!" Sora whined. His tan little fists buried themselves in his hair as he groaned, head slumping forward onto his knees in defeat. Clearly Riku was just not cut out for detecting any lie-- or any truth for that matter. Sora couldn't help but wonder if he was constantly high on something or just downright oblivious. At that point, either option seemed like fair enough game.

But then of course there was the awkward silence. And of course neither knew whose turn it was to take up the reins of their silly game. Riku looked at Sora. Sora looked at Riku. And both of them told a truth in the very next moment, trying to break the silence with a nice little brick and instead slamming a ten ton wrecking ball right into the entire damn thing.

"I'm afraid of ferris wheels."

"I think you're really sexy."

And then came the chorus of--

"...**_What?_**"

And each stared at the other and once the metaphorical dust had cleared from their metaphorical disaster, Riku almost felt compelled to open his own metaphorical mind-closet and get out the broom and dustpan. ...Then he remembered all the nasty little thoughts he'd worked so hard to lock up in there the previous day. So he left it alone. He left it up to Sora to decide if they'd make anything out of... out of... whatever the _hell _had just happened.

"Truth."

"...Huh?"

"..." After studying Riku for quite a long moment, Sora just shook his head and threw up his hands, sliding back soundlessly onto the floor. He lay hunched over like that for a moment, glancing at Riku through the cover of his messy brown bangs, catching sight of the confusion on the older boy's face. But instead of explaining, Sora just stated obvious fact.

"You suck at this game," he muttered.

"I do not."

"Do too."

"Do--"

"Heeey, boys!" Jarring the kitchen door open with her hip, Kairi swung into the room, a dish in each hand and two more lined up each arm. Either the girl had some sort of mad waitressing skills or she was just naturally gifted with the ability to multi-task. Didn't matter which it was-- the food smelled delicious and Riku had never seen a prettier bowl of pasta, a greener salad, a redder tomato, a fluffier loaf of baked bread... Everything looked so... _fresh_.

Clearly not put off by the expensive rug lying out beneath them, Kairi laid out the dishes right on the floor. And apparently this was... normal. Sora just sat up and scooted over towards the nearest plate, calm, cool, and collected as could be. ...Well, as could be under the sway of some damn appealing food.

"Eat up!" Kairi chirped, right before disappearing into the kitchen once more, returning with glasses filled to the brim with milk. A little odd, but Riku wasn't one to complain, not when he had his mouth hovering over a forkful of tempting Alfredo linguine. Rich and creamy Italian goodness, fresh from the stovetop and curling with a delicate little steam and perfect smell, absolute aroma-- _crazy_.

"Mmfoo sudoo en--"

Sitting down at her spot on the floor, Kairi flicked her napkin into her lap, dishing a neat little serving of pasta onto her plate while ladling sauce on top of that-- and all done while throwing the brunette beside her a scornful little look and reprimand. "Sora, swallow before you talk. Honestly."

Grinning broadly and doing as told, Sora waved his fork around wildly for emphasis, saying, "You know your food's always so good, Kairi. I mean, you just have no life outside of your kitchen. Not that I mind! Mmm... ...Well, actually, now that I think about it, there was that _one_ time..."

Cough, hack. A warning. "Sora, don't."

"What time?" Riku asked, curiosity getting the better of him. All it really earned him immediately was a swift little nudge from Kairi's nearby elbow and the sudden intensity of Sora's grin and Kairi's glare. A warm pair of blue eyes and a freezing gaze from a redhead. Interesting combination, Riku had to admit. After a moment of stillness, Sora took it upon himself to clear his throat with exaggerated grace and clarify, enlighten, explain.

"The banana cream pie incident."

"You promised not to--!"

"Banana cream pie?"

"Yeah, it was _hilarious_."

"Sora!"

"And I'll tell you about it some other time."

"You _better_ not. Riku, don't let him talk crap about me, okay? Anything he says is just a lie, lie, lie, lie..." Spoon cradled in her left hand, Kairi used her right to twirl her fork, spinning up pasta in the shell of the spoon before delicately popping the little pasta package into her mouth. The girl narrowed her eyes into a cute little pout in Sora's general direction, a bitter something of a sentiment only broken by a mischievous little smile and a quirky little confession.

"Actually, I haven't lied to Riku yet," Sora said. And he said it to Kairi, sure, but he stared directly at Riku while he said it, making sure the boy got the message.

Riku did. Of course Riku did. He may have been higher than a kite on fifty thousand narcotics, but he wasn't stupid. No, he was just caught slightly off guard. And through the puzzle haze of his mind, it occurred to him that Sora was quite blatantly hitting on him. ...So, Riku did the only thing he could think of.

He said nothing and raised his glass to him mouth, guzzling milk for all he was worth.

"Am I missing something?" Kairi asked slowly.

Pulling the glass from his lips, Riku promptly set it gently on the ground and turned to the girl with what he hoped was an impressive, somewhat-improved-from-yesterday's-disaster grin. "No!" _Smile, smile, come on, face, I know you've got it somewhere. People always say so. Let's get back in action here.._. He scooped up his fork and speared a lettuce leaf and cherry tomato, glancing at the girl as he said, "...This is _excellent_, Kairi."

And clearly? Riku hadn't lost his touch. Not as much as he'd originally thought.

"Thanks, Riku! At least **someone** appreciates my work."

"Hey, **I **said it was good already!"

"But Riku said _excellent_. So Riku wins. Thank you, Riku."

In his own defense, Sora's pink little tongue promptly flicked outwards, the spiky haired boy making quite the comeback with a triumphant little "Nyeeeh!"

"Sora, don't be such a baby! Good lord, only five year olds stick out their tongues."

"I _wasn't_ sticking out my tongue! I was pointing."

"You point with your _fingers_, dummy. What were you 'pointing' at?"

"Riku."

Riku looked up from his food as both pairs of eyes were suddenly fixated on him. He glanced at the cherry tomato speared onto the end of his fork. ...Glanced at Sora. ...Glanced at Kairi. Figuring he'd better say something, Riku blinked, paused, and ventured a wary, "Why?"

"You have some salad dressing right--" Sora tapped the side of his cheek, face dimpled into a cute smile as he did so. "--there."

"Oh."

From her position sitting cross-legged on the floor, Kairi studied the two boys sitting opposite one another. Her crafty little blue eyes were thinking something dreadful, no doubt, when she flew up from her seat and clapped one hand to the back of her hand, waving the other back and forth through the air. "Wow, I forgot the napkins! One sec!"

And once again, Riku found himself left alone with the little boy devil.

This kid has more hormones bottled up inside him than a cat in heat. To think he ever looked innocent...

"I can get it!" Sluu-uurp. The tongue which had earlier been 'pointing' at Riku in quite the display of defiance was now lapping delicately at his cheek, clearing up the stray salad dressing and-- Riku just couldn't help but notice-- straying dangerously close to the curl of his lips.

"Er."

"Don't you _ever_ respond to _anything_?" Sora whined quietly, fixing Riku with a proper little pout.

"I can't," Riku said. _Wait... WHAT. That doesn't even make sense. Take that back. Fucking moron._ _Fucking moron self... moron... moron..._

"What, you have some girlfriend back on your mysterious island chain?"

"No, that's not it."

"Does she think really deep thoughts or something? Do really deep thoughts turn you on, Ri-ku?"

"There _is_ no girl."

"What's so great about really deep thoughts, huh?"

"There _is no girl_."

As though this one solitary little fact finally managed to hit home, Sora blinked, almost looking timidly up at Riku as the very corners of his mouth curled into the tiniest little smile. "...But is there a boy?"

But Riku's hesitant response did nothing to reassure or demolish Sora's scattered little thoughts. No, the silver-haired kid just looked away and gave a sullen little saying of: "There's nothing."

_There's nothing, nothing, nothing, now leave me the fuck alone._

But that, of course, was when it happened. When Sora leaned just a little bit forward, his smile stretching a little bit wider, and his eyes-- in Riku's mind-- his eyes got just a little bluer. Sora brushed his lips against Riku's, letting out a small sigh as he did so, breath tickling the tip of Riku's nose.

His smile was nothing short of flawless when he said it, when he whispered, "But there's always _something_, Ri-ku."

And it was all Riku could do to just sit and stare... and stare and _stare_ at the eyes that grew deeper and darker and cooler and cleaner. Black on the inside, blue on the outside, and white to ring it all together. _Blue, black and white. Rain and some pandas. Sora's the amazing boy with the bath-water voice and the panda-monsoon eyes! I'm a fucking romantic... I'm a fucking freak of a romantic._

Riku exhaled, Sora drank in his air. Sora tilted his head, Riku's hand shifted, raised upward an inch or two, moved forward and stopped. Scared? Possibly. Intimidated? Most likely. Hesitant? Definitely. Yet Sora's own came forward to clasp his fingertips and both of them were suddenly, pleasantly quiet and still in the perfect little living room of the perfect little house in the perfect, _perfect_ little suburb.

"Getting right to the point, I think you're really fucking cool, Riku." Smile widening to a grin, Sora's fingers, still entwined in Riku's own, gave an experimental little wiggle as he said, "Kairi's not going to bring me lunch tomorrow because it's Wednesday. So you have to now, okay? And then we'll think lots of really deep thoughts together and see how turned on you get by them."

"...**_What?_**"

"Take a joke, man!"

"You make it difficult."

"I make everything difficult, huh?"

"I didn't say that."

"You thought it. 'Man, this loser kid never shuts up! What a nasty little fruit!'"

"I never said that."

"You sure you didn't even think it? Not once?"

_Thinking of him as a horny cat, a bath tub, and a panda-- none of those is a nasty little fruit. This time I'm definitely in the clear._ "Really. Didn't cross my mind."

"...Are you sure?"

"What, are you _trying_ to make me look bad?" Riku actually managed to pull off a half smile which, he was fairly sure, didn't look half bad. And there was a slight shift, a slight play of light in Sora's baby blues that assured him of that fact. Maybe it really wasn't half bad. "Besides, I thought you could tell if I was lying or not," Riku continued.

"I can," said Sora. He leant in closer and threaded his fingers through Riku's silver hair, sliding his hand down and studying the motion with a pleased smile of his own stretching across his face. "I just wanted to make sure you wouldn't try."

They sat like that for several moments, Sora across from Riku, stroking the boy's hair without a single care in the world. Riku... couldn't remember the last time he'd felt so damn near boneless before. All he wanted to do was flop forward and prop his head up in the boy's lap, perfectly content to be petted and stroked like that for the rest of the evening, for the rest of the entire blasted summer. But all he could do was sit, eyes half open, gaze falling somewhere between Sora's chin and the collar of his shirt.

Finally, Riku felt compelled to break the silence with a question that had been bothering him for just several of those long, pleasant minutes. "...So exactly how far away are the napkins?" he asked.

"Huh?"

And magnificently on-cue, the door to the kitchen swung wide open, Kairi standing with a fistful of napkins and an embarrassed little blush that wasn't quite blocked out by the dim lighting. "Wo-ow, you guys wouldn't believe what happened! Hahaha! I mean, there I was, standing by the napkin holder and then there was this huge spider, right? And it got in my hair, you know, uh, so, like, I had to go and um... You know. Kill it!"

Sora blinked and just shook his head. "Oh, _Kairi._"

"What?"

"Nothing."

"WHAT?"

"Nothing, nothing."

"Don't you nothing me, mister! I _made_ that food you're eating!"

If Kairi had noticed the way Riku had Sora had suddenly shot apart from one another the moment she'd emerged from the doorway, she didn't choose to comment on it. Instead, she passed out napkins quite obediently and went back to her position on the floor, once again cradling her plate of food in her hands.

"And it's good. Like I said," Sora explained. "Mmm, but I dunno if it's eeexcellent... What do you think, Riku?"

"Sora! How can you _say_ that?" Met with only a delighted little laugh from the brunette, Kairi let out a desperate huff of a sign and turned to face Riku, stabbing her pasta almost violently and making an obvious attempt at a change of topic. "Riku, you're totally gonna love our school."

"No he isn't. It's so lame."

"Don't say that, Sora. It's totally not helping. Riku, it's a nice school!"

"Yeah, you'll lo-ove the football games."

"He will!"

"Our half-time shows sound like someone's taking a herd of cattle out to slaughter."

"Sora!"

"Well it's true. Our band _blows_ and even they admit it! It's not like I'm being mean or anything. Really, I'm not."

"You're sooo harsh."

"Am not."

"Are too."

"Ri-ku doesn't think I'm harsh. Right, Riku?"

"...Not really, no."

"Riku, you're supposed to be on my side!"

"Sorry."

"You're not _really_ sorry, are you Riku?"

"...Not really, no."

"You guys are horrible."

And so the night went on. As Kairi remained relatively close in proximity for the rest of it (no more random napkin-hunts, at least), Sora seemed to cool down slightly. He returned, once again, to that tan, childish little boy Riku had first encountered clambering out from the pavement beneath a school bus. Carefree and oblivious, sun-kissed and sneakered, carrying that perfect quality of a kid caught in the middle of summer.

...Which, of course, is exactly what Sora _was_. It just took Riku some time to figure it out.

Through the dim light coming from the TV screen, Riku could half make out his shoelaces peering up at him, lying just past the hem of his baggy cargo pants. They looked a little displaced, he decided, though he couldn't for the life of him figure out why. At one point, Sora followed Riku's gaze and, with a delighted little laugh, bent over and untied the smiley laces. He then untied his own and promptly proceeded to tie both pairs of feet together, much to his own amusement.

Kairi giggled. Sora laughed. And Riku... Well. Riku _tried_.

"Now you can't run from me, Riku! You're trapped!"

"Sora, don't freak him out, good grief."

"He's not freaked out. Besides, I like his shoes _and _his laces. You like mine, Riku?"

After some careful examination, Riku wasn't exactly sure he would call what he felt towards those bizarre yellow sneakers anything close to 'affection.' But one look at Sora's face was all it took, really.

"Of course I like your shoes."

"Aww, don't lie now!"

By the time ten o' clock rolled around, Riku felt as though he'd never been pulled in quite so many directions at any given time. His mind told him he was tired, sick of the noise, sick of the people, of the food, of the laughter, of the lack of goddamn loneliness. Oh, but his poor wee little suppressed and suffering heart. That sickly little thing. It cried out for more, more, more, but Riku just couldn't find it in himself to deliver. So he called it an evening and after a mild plea from Kairi to stay, stay, stay, he apologized and made for the door.

He shouldn't have been all that surprised when Sora followed him out, lingering on the front step, hands in his pockets and head tilted to one side. ...No, he shouldn't have been surprised. And maybe he wasn't actually surprised at all.

...Still, that didn't exactly mean Riku knew what to **do**.

"Um..."

"You're coming to see me tomorrow, right? 'Cause Cid'll fire me if you don't."

"You'll blame me if you lose your job?"

"Uh huh!"

Another little twitch of a smile. "Okay," Riku said. "I'll be there."

He took about half a moment to take in Sora's appearance in the porch-lit evening. Really, he didn't look too much different than the daylight Sora. Just a little more tempting, a little more thoughtful, more pouty, more vulnerable. If that last one was even possible.

_If I was a rapist, this kid would be so dead._

And yet because Riku wasn't a saint and because his pathetic little heart still demanded attention, he took three steps forward and one step up, meeting Sora on the steps and giving the boy a quick little dusting of a kiss on the cheek.

"I knew you spoke my language." And Sora grinned while he said it. And even in the dark of night, that grin was the brightest thing Riku had seen all damn day. "Don't forget," Sora said. "Come see me tomorrow, okay?"

"Okay."

x x x

"Riku, you forgot to take your medicine at eight."

"I wasn't here at eight."

Mayako didn't look up from the newspaper spread out before her when she responded. She simply waved one hand around airily, dismissively, saying, "So take it now then."

Riku had arrived back at his aunt and uncle's house expecting something of this sort. After all, he hadn't honestly expected to somehow escape Mayako's bitter disposition the entire day, but he hadn't expected to have it all come back and bite him in the ass at once, either. Sighing lightly, he toed his shoes off at the doorway and made his way into the kitchen. Across from his dearest aunt sat his dearest uncle, quiet and brooding over another page from the same paper.

Reaching up into the medicine cabinet, Riku paused, a thought suddenly cropping up in the back of his head and prodding him into saying, "Listen, could you not mention this in front of people? Like this morning with Kairi? I know I have to take them, okay?"

"What, you don't want to look weak in front of her?" Mayako asked innocently. In the quiet that followed, the only sound that was made was her turning the page, slowly. Painfully. Damn near_ loudly_.

"It's not like that!"

"Riku, take your medicine."

"I don't need to impress Kairi."

"You think everyone just wants to fall head over heels in love with you?"

"She-- she's n-- she _isn't_!"

"Maya..." Riku's uncle looked up warily from his paper, only to be caught dead on the receiving end of glares from both his wife and his nephew.

_Oh, so the docile husband finally speaks? After she walks all over me? Just what the hell does this guy do anyway? No doubt about who wears the pants in this fucking relationship. What a pansy. _

"Just don't, would you?" Mayako hissed. She rose smoothly to her feet and took her leave, disappearing into the den with a click of double doors and a deep, painful silence in her wake.

Riku turned back to the sink, jerked on the tap water and let it run, fingertips feeling it turn colder and colder by the second.

"...Mayako doesn't mean to upset you, Riku, you know that."

"Yeah. Whatever." He filled his glass with water and obediently popped the pills. He just couldn't help but notice how he gagged, how the water made things no easier as they went all the way down, catching and snagging in his throat, dissolving every inch of the way.

"You have people who want to help you, Riku... Those new friends of yours... I'm sure they want to help? I want to help. Maya wants to help, too. She just doesn't know how... Not yet. Give her time, okay?"

Riku didn't respond. He just shrugged his shoulders, rinsed out his glass, and placed it neatly in the dishwasher. And then he was gone, back up to his room which still wasn't quite his, left to staring at walls and thinking about how things were really, truly no different than they ever had been. Not since he got there. Not since that morning.

_...But things happened today... didn't they?_

And it was still spitting rain outside.

And half an hour later, when the meds just began to act up, Riku somehow managed to force himself into believing he was doped up enough to see a couple giant pandas dropping out of the sky and onto the front lawn. But it was just a desperate attempt to amuse himself, to get himself tired, sick of himself, ready and willing for sleep. Yet once he got started on the pandas, there was just no saving that train of thought.

_Bath-water boy with his blue panda eyes. He's almost as crazy as I am. But how come he gets to be adorably insane and I'm just... insane? I mean, what the hell is up with that bus anyway?_

_"Sora likes to pretend it'll roll over him someday."_

Riku couldn't help but shudder at the thought, his mind suddenly filled with images of one sad, broken little boy lying crushed beneath the wheels of a bus. The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round... He felt the pull, but it wasn't so much in his chest as it was in his head. The medicine was kicking in and really getting going. Gone was the mental blood and gone was the dead little boy, replaced instead by a blank gray slate that wouldn't fill up with any picture no matter how hard Riku tried.

So he staggered over to the bed. He turned out the light and he curled up. He closed his eyes and the gray was still there and there was no getting rid of it. And the worst part was, he knew he'd wake up facing a wall the exact same color, the exact same shade, in the exact same place it had been a day before.

Yet still...

_"You have something against _me_?"_

_"Liar. Come on, try a little harder!"_

_"Do really deep thoughts turn you on, Ri-ku?"_

_"I knew you spoke my language."_

_It's nothing but some stupid little kid playing some stupid little mind games. Nothing but that... So stop thinking about it, Riku. Go to fucking sleep already. There's nothing there._

_"But there's always _something_ Ri-ku..."_

(x) (x) (x)

Sora's 'deep thoughts' comment is derived from Tori Amos' song, 'Silent All These Years.' ('So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts, what's so amazing 'bout really deep thoughts?) And yes, yes. Chapter title credit goes to Teddy Geiger's song and album title, 'Thinking Underage.' I'm not about to deny the fact that I'm vulnerable to the temptations of pop music. Shame, that.

Passage from The Elephant Vanishes is, of course, Haruki Murakami's work. I strongly recommend everyone pick up at a book of his and at least give it a good looking at. He's _amazing_ and a huge inspiration. (Riku's last name here-- 'Wataya'-- is actually the last name of one of Murakami's characters.)

Finally, special thanks goes out to Vash's Girl for her spectacular beta read. Die, spelling errors, die!

Anyway, on that note, stay warm and toasty-- go outside and play! ...After you drop a little review, maybe?


	3. Frame Your Mind

**Suburbia**

'Frame Your Mind'

"God, wouldn't it be awesome if it started snowing? Right now?"

"Why?"

"Because if it snowed hard enough, we could get trapped under this bus forever. Wouldn't that be something?"

"Sora, we'd die."

"But wouldn't it be great _before_ that?"

"...Are you insane?"

Just as requested, Riku had shown up at Sora's workplace the day following their dinner at Kairi's. And, just as before, he found the brunette beneath the parked school bus in the back of the shopping center, the boy lying calmly beneath, arms folded over his chest. Any awkwardness Riku had worried about had been obliterated by the brilliant grin of the cheery brunette as he'd coaxed Riku down and under the bus with him, the two now lying side by side, staring up at the rather filthy expanse of metal above.

"Heehee, na-ah. I'm just messing with you. You can't pick up on that? You can't pick up on _anything_, Riku... Not on truths, not on jokes. Heck, you look as though you don't understand anything, but you seem so smart." Sora's pretty little mouth twisted into a pout, one that Riku struggled to ignore, even in the darkness around them. He skin prickled faintly as something pressed against his shoulder, as something crept up and sat against his chest. "Just can't feel anything..." Sora mumbled quietly. His head was tucked into the crook of Riku's shoulder then, mouth against his ear and palm against his chest.

"Of course I still _feel_ things," Riku said quickly. He didn't know quite why, but Sora's tone had just given that warning tug, that painful pull at the pit of his chest. So Riku found himself pulling up the words, fitting them sloppily together-- "Sometimes I just feel too much. So I shut it out." _ Wait, what the-- that's not what I meant. Dear God, I sound like a mental case._ "I mean, _no_, that's _not_ what I mean..."

"What'd they do to you?" Sora asked quietly.

"...Do to me...?"

"Something's hurting you, isn't it?"

_Man, this kid is not gonna give up, is he?_ Yeah, that was the truth Riku acknowledged just fine. While his mind struggled to figure out who could come out on top in the end-- the stubborn Riku or the persuasive Sora-- the silver-haired boy made the one fatal mistake of tilting his head just so, just enough to catch an eyeful of Sora's pleading little gaze, of his big deep blue eyes fixated right on him-- him and only him at that one particular moment in time.

Needless to say, his brain surrendered and he caved right on in.

"It's... erm. Not. ...It's. ...Several somethings." Swallowing, Riku forced his voice into submission as he plowed onward, now forcefully looking away from Sora's eyes and back towards the bus. The las thing he wanted to see was the boy getting sappy, getting sorry. "A medical condition. Not muscle spasms. My heart freaks out because of stress. If it gets bad, I have a heart attack."

"...God."

"When... my parents died, that pretty much started it all. Uh... Yeah. There were things bothering me before that. Their deaths just set it off. So now Mayako's got me on pills." Riku shrugged, but the motion was all but lost in the shadow of the bus and his position on the ground. "If I seem... off... that's why."

"What kind of pills?" Sora asked. _Well, at least he's not melting into a puddle of emotional goo yet. **That's** reassuring._

"I think they're anti-depressants. Blood-thinners. Pain-killers. You know."

"Riku..." It was then that Riku realized the other boy had rolled onto his side, turned to face Riku fully, the hand that had been resting on his chest now settled onto and around his shoulder. "What if you stopped taking the pills, huh? I mean, what do they really _do_? You don't need medication to make you better. That's crap. You need less stress and more fun. You need to have a good time and be happy. Not be drugged up all the time..." Giving Riku's shoulder a gentle squeeze, Sora finally caught Riku's eyes and gave the older boy a soft, sweet smile. "Stop taking them!"

"Maybe I will."

"You will. 'Cause I wanna see what the real, live and awake Riku's like."

"No you don't."

_He says that now, but he doesn't even know me. Heck, he hardly knows anything about me at all! Not what I'm like now, now what I was like back home. If he knew... he wouldn't want me like that. I'm not even sure if I want me like that. ...God, was anything ever **not** confusing? This is bullshit._

But Sora pressed on with that grin, that innocent grin. "Sure I know. Like you'd know what I want anyhow."

And Riku fought back with a smirk. "You might be surprised."

"So surprise me."

Sora was quiet-- actually near silent, for once-- his other arm slipping over and across Riku's body as Sora propped himself up on one elbow. Between the cool metal of the bus and the warm glow of Riku's skin slid the little messy-haired, wide-eyed kid, until the entire length of his small body was draped gingerly over Riku's. He smiled lightly, almost shyly, before tilting his head and bending down and brushing his lips against Riku's own.

They stayed like that for several long moments, Sora quietly, cautiously testing his limits with gentle nips and kisses. His fingers found their way to Riku's long silver hair and there they stayed, playing and winding and dancing lightly across the boy's scalp. His tongue flicked tentatively against Riku's mouth, sliding in as Riku parted his lips and fisted his hands in Sora's shirt, tugging him closer and upping the pace by just one more notch.

In a tangle of limbs and clothing, kissing and sucking, Riku found himself pressed and melting into the asphalt, lungs exploding with the pressure-- _Holy crap what the hell am I_-- "_Shit_!" Riku hissed, breaking away from Sora's teasing little mouth and arching up against the body above him. Sora's grin was bright and devilish as he rocked down against Riku once more, ragged breathing and muffled moaning all that filled his ears, knees locked around Riku's waist, fingers wound around Riku's hair.

And then poor Riku finally managed to grit out...

"You make it difficult to surprise you when you've got me pinned under both you _and_ a bus."

With a breathless, airy little laugh, Sora ceased his tortuous attack on the boy underneath him, resting his chin on Riku's chest and shooting the other boy a playful smile. "Come on, Riku," he said. "You're strong. If you wanted to, you could push me off, right? But you _don't_ want to, do you?" And that playful grin turned delightfully wicked once more as Sora nipped gently at Riku's mouth, tugging his bottom lip between his teeth. It hurt, but at the same time... "Do you?" he asked again.

"No, Sora..."

"What?"

"No, I mean, I can't push you off." Sucking in as much air as he could, Riku tried to calm himself down. _Damn. The last thing I honestly need is to get a hard-on here, of all places... Oh God. Oh God and I can't move..._ "I think I'm stuck."

Letting out a little growl of frustration, Sora whined, "Riku, you can't just chicken out like that!" Riku could just make out the disappointment lacing the corners of the boy's eyes, but honestly, there wasn't much he could do about it. Because...

"I'm not 'chickening out,' for God's sake! I'm serious! I can't move!"

With a huff of a sigh and another determined little glare, Sora proceeded to wriggle off of Riku's chest. ...Or at least, he made a good, solid effort. Gave it the old college try, really. A noble, noble effort. A failed effort. A big fat-- "...Oh shit."

"What?"

"I think I'm stuck."

Riku rolled his eyes, mind finally beginning to clear out the lusty smoke that had fogged it up. Now, instead of acting like a normal, hormone-driven teenager, Riku was back to his lifeless little puppetered self, calmly taking it all in stride. _Only because I'm higher than a fucking Macy's Thanksgiving Day balloon._ "You're not stuck, Sora," Riku insisted. "All you have to do is get off me."

But Sora was serious. Not a trace of his previous amusement lit up his cute little face as he continued to whine, continued to panic. "No, no, I mean it! My pants are stuck on something!"

"...Please tell me you're kidding."

"Nooo! Riku, what do we do? We're gonna be stuck here forever!"

"No we're not."

"Well _I _can't move and _you_ can't move. Oh man, we're so screwed." Sora gnawed anxiously on his bottom lip and drummed his fingertips against Riku's chest, clearly lost in deep thought. Slightly amused and slightly aggravated, all at the same time, Riku could only sigh and wait for dear Sora to get his bearings. And get his bearings the boy did, coming up with an oh-so-brilliant plan in the process. "Are you sure you can't just like... slide out or something? Maybe then I could get off and just fall on the ground," Sora said.

"No, your legs make it difficult."

Sure enough, Sora's legs had looped around Riku's own during their brief little excursion, knees and calves and thighs all in such a tangle that there was no sense in trying to decide which limb belonged to who anymore-- they all blended together and neither could really get a good look at their own legs anyway, Sora's chest pressing Riku into the ground, still.

Ah, but of course the fun couldn't just end there. No, there just had to be the swinging of a door... and the approach of two voices along with a pair of footsteps.

"Oh God, who's that?" Sora whispered. His eyes doubled in size and he buried his face in Riku's chest, successfully knocking the wind out of the other boy with ease, somehow believing that if he could see absolutely no one, no one could see him.

"--the fuck do you think you're doing anyway? This is employee only parking, can't you read the goddamn sign?" Riku could barely distinguish the first voice as that of the bookshop owner he'd briefly met the day before. _What had Sora called him again? Cid, right?_

The other voice, Riku had never heard before. While not as gruff as Cid's, it came across as being more laid-back, more amused by the situation at hand rather than put-off by it.

"Now, now, Highwind, all the screamin' can't be good fer that blood pressure ah yers. You been watchin' yer cholesterol a'ight?"

"Get yer fuckin' cheese wagon off my damn parking lot!"

With a goodhearted laugh and the clunk of boots on asphalt, the man apparently in charge of the school-bus came into view. Or rather, his shoes did. Both Sora and Riku watched in horror as the pair of boots made their way along the side of the bus before disappearing with the swish of a door, only followed by the crank and groan of the ignition and the bus' engine whirring to life.

"Oh no!" Sora let out a strangled little cry, turning to face Riku with a look which clearly expressed deep sympathy for the other's death. After all, if it wasn't for Sora, Riku never would have crawled under the school bus in the first place. Would never, never have faced such an untimely demise.

"Sora..."

If Riku's life flashed before his eyes, it must not have been much to look at. Instead, all he could focus on was Sora's pretty little blue headlights fogging up with tears that spilled over and landed smack on Riku's waiting face. Plop, plop, plop. _Poor kid, poor..._

_Riii-iiip._

"Ow!"

Riku wheezed and hacked and choked and coughed, breathless and squashed beneath Sora's full weight as the boy was no longer caught on some under-hanging part of the bus. Even in the ensuing chaos, however, Sora's tan little hand quickly managed to find its way to Riku's mouth, stifling his dying sounds as the bus came to a stop about three yards ahead from where it had been. This left the boys still sheltered beneath it, but only by a scant four feet or so.

There was no doubt in reading Sora's warning glare. Don't talk, if you value your goddamn life.

In the following moments, the bus went silent again, the door flew open again, and there appeared those black boots. ...Again. The voices went at it one last time, Cid arguing over the the tiny amount of space in the parking lot and "Why the hell is your goddamn bus here anyway?" only to face a retort of "Nuh room in the school's lot." The two older men egged one another on, Cid growing only more angry and colorful by the second, the pair only finally silenced by the swing, the smack, and the click of the bookstore door in their wake.

Without another word, Riku and Sora scrambled out from underneath the bus as fast as they could possibly manage, neither of them seeming too badly harmed, seeing as little grease and dirt never really hurt anyone.

"...Are you okay?" Riku asked warily after quite the awkward moment of silence.

"Yeah, but I dunno if my pants are."

Riku cocked his head to the side just so, watching quietly as Sora fought to spin around in circles, trying to catch a glimpse of the backside of his pants. A little tear was all that Riku could initially see. No big deal. ...But somehow, that tear suddenly doubled, tripled in size. ...And that was how poor Sora's pants magically split in half and fell down around his ankles, leaving the boy standing there, stunned dead silent. ...In his little purple boxers.

"..."

"..."

"...Er... Sora?"

"Oh maaan!" Finally reacting, clutching his hands to his thoroughly mortified face, Sora let out a distressed little squeal of embarrassment before instantly turning on Riku, who was currently trying to stifle the laughter that threatened to bubble over at any given second. "Riku! Wh-- heeey! It's not funny!"

"How are you going to go in to work like that?"

Scrubbing at his face to calm down the blush, Sora stuttered about for a minute before finally slumping forward in defeat, shoulders hunched and head hung low. "I can't. There's no way in hell. I'll have to go home and get a new pair of pants. Man, Cid's totally gonna fire me. I just know--" But that was where he stopped. For Riku began to do something very curious... "R-Riku, what--?"

With quite the solemn look on his face, Riku actually stood in the center of the parking lot, undoing the buttons of his pants before sliding them off with ease. It was an act with brought Sora's face back to its previous shade of beet red, only darkening even more as Riku awkwardly held out his pants in one hand towards Sora.

"Here..." Riku mumbled. "Just take them already." _Thank God I'm not feeling so horny anymore. Nearly getting rolled over by a bus does that, I guess. Really kills the mood, it does._

"You are so fucking awesome, Riku." Sora bounced and leapt upon Riku in a half-pounce, half-hug. Something eerily similar and defining of a word Riku had once heard. _Something like a glomp._

"Mm. Right. So."

As Sora slid on Riku's baggy jeans, all grins and smiles and giggles and laughs now, he jerked his head back over towards a sparse little forest growing out behind the shopping center at the end of the parking lot. "Hey, if you cut back through those trees, you can get to the tracks. And if you follow 'em down until you hit this little house with a porch on it and then go up on that street, you can get back to your house without walking along the main drag in your boxers!"

"...You honestly expect me to know how to get home like that?"

"...Good point."

"It's okay, really. You need to get back to work," Riku insisted. In his hands, he held Sora's tattered pair of pants. He had actually hoped that he might somehow be able to make it back to Mayako's house wearing said pants, but now that he got a good look at them... there was no way those things were staying up around anyone's waist.

"I swear I'll make this up to you, Riku. I _swear_, okay?"

"You don't have to."

"Oh yes I do-o! Yes I do!"

Riku laughed as Sora gave him another bone-crushing hug and a gentle kiss on the mouth, the boy twisting away only half a second later and spinning through the door into the bookshop once again. Scratching the back of his head and trying to puzzle it all out, Riku strove to remember just how he'd ended up with no pants but Sora's pants dangling in his arms.

...Really, it all made very little sense. And as he tried to remember what he'd done the rest of that day before his little meeting with Sora, he found it all surprisingly blank. _Wow. Do I have no life or what? This is just downright pathetic. _ And with that thought to keep him company, Riku headed off towards Mayako's house, trying to keep his chin up and his back straight, praying that people in this town would mistake his boxers for a pair of shorts.

...Too bad they didn't.

Riku couldn't remember a time in which he'd ever been more embarrassed. It didn't help that he made at least three wrong turns into random cul-de-sacs and courts and places, each time drawing countless pairs of eyes and mocking giggles. And he-- the kid in his boxers toddling down the street-- could only sigh when the clouds above gave way to more summer rain, completely soaking him and what little clothing he had on. Thankfully, it wasn't long after that that he found himself at the head of his aunt's street and her home along with it. And it wasn't long after that that he discovered the cars were gone, the lights were off, and... the door. ...Was locked.

"Of course," Riku muttered. Staring at the door, perhaps he thought that if he looked at it long enough, it would take pity on him and swing right on open. Looking at his shoes, perhaps he realized that those laces at that moment weren't just smiling-- they were flat out laughing at him and all his godawful misfortune.

Trying not to get his hopes up, Riku heaved another sigh before clutching Sora's tattered pants to his chest and puttering across the lawn towards Kairi's house, ringing the doorbell and praying for all he was worth that the girl was there. ...And her parents weren't. But he waited and waited and rang and rang and turned his head towards the sky and asked, "Dear God, why do you hate me?"

And he crossed the lawn and he grappled with a window and he jammed his thumb and he cursed and whined and cursed again for whining. After trying desperately to cower under the overhanging roof above, Riku decided enough was enough. From just over the fence surrounding Kairi's yard, Riku could make out the slate gray roof of some adjacent little building which looked to be a gazebo. _Kairi'll understand. If I stay out here, I'll get sick. And if I get sick, well... There's no way in hell I'll be confined to that house for days on end._

With this last thought, Riku tucked Sora's battered pair of pants beneath an arm and scaled the fence with ease. ...Right before falling into the pool on the other side. To save quite a bit of time discussing Riku's thoughts and feelings on this particular event, we will simply leave it at this one prevailing statement of truth: he was most disgruntled.

After having pulled his cold, abused, and thoroughly soaked body from the depths of the pool, he made his merry, squelching way towards the gazebo, catching a glimpse of red along the way. Backtracking several paces, he peered through the rain, through the window, setting eyes one what was unmistakably the back of Kairi's head. She was seated on the ground, it seemed, clearly facing away from the window and clearly oblivious to Riku's tap on the glass and his half-hollered "Kairi!"

_Good God, girl! Turn around for crying out loud! _"Kairi..." Tap, tap, tap.

...Still no response.

Now completely agitated beyond all reasonable belief, Riku's desperate stare turned into a frown as he tugged frustratedly at the damn window. And both desperation and frustration were shot to pieces when the window actually cooperated and slid right on open. _...Well damn, if I'd known it was t**hat** easy._ "Kairi!" Riku hissed.

...Nope. Nothing.

"KAIRI!"

Silence.

If Riku was attracted to women, perhaps he would have reacted quite different to what awaited him on the other side of the window. As it was, however, his wet bangs chose that exact moment to plaster themselves over his eyes, to blind him for half a second and send him slamming against the wall, tripping on the ledge and falling, tragically, onto the poor girl seated on the floor below. The poor girl, who was, at that particular moment in time, in quite a state of undress, sitting only in her dainty little underwear.

Riku wasn't just disgruntled anymore. He was freaking the hell out.

"_Jesus_, Kairi!"

"RIKU? Wh-- _Whyyy_ are you in my _room_?"

"Please put some clothes on. I'm begging you."

"What happened to your pants?"

"They're not mine, they're Sora's!"

"Riku,** why** do you have Sora's pants?" Clutching one hand to her chest and clearly struggling to recover from the shock of being pounced upon in the comfort of her own home... Kairi scowled at the image of Riku with his hand clapped over his eyes. "For crying out loud, would you uncover your eyes already? I'm not _that_ ugly, am I?"

Blinking, Riku awkwardly obeyed and removed his hands, still pointedly averting his gaze to the side. "No, it's not that," he mumbled.

"Well_ fine_. Besides. It's not like it's anything you've never seen before, right?"

"It's different. You're not in a bikini."

"There's no difference! Now, you want to explain yourself or what?" Kairi's crossed arms at least allowed Riku to look her in the eye without feeling terribly misplaced. There was something about unclothed women that just made him downright uncomfortable. To voice this to Kairi, though, was probably not a good idea. Even if she had seemed open-minded and friendly before... No one ever liked to hear that their girl-body had all the sexual appeal of a cold, dead fish.

_That made little to no sense. Way to go, Riku. And she's still staring at you, waiting for some goddamn explanation as to why the hell you broke into her house. Cough it up, lame-ass. No way out of it now._

And so Riku explained. He recounted the morning's events perfectly, calmly, and detachedly. If it wasn't for the slight stumble of his words as he grazed over the details of his little make-out session with Sora, Kairi might have thought he was even making the entire thing up. But there was no escaping the truth in his words as he finished his story, plunging both of them into a painfully awkward silence. All things considered, though, Kairi seemed to be taking it remarkably well.

"...If you break his heart, I'll never speak to you again, Riku Wataya."

"Kairi, he was the one who came onto me. Not the other way a--" But Riku's frantic words only succeeded in earning him a reprimanding scowl, stunning him into a trained silence.

"Look," Kairi snapped, "if you don't like him, _stop him_, got it? Do you even_ like_ boys?"

"Well, I guess--"

"Do you like _girls_?"

"I think--"

Kairi let out an angry little growl, shifting closer towards Riku and somehow becoming increasingly intimidating. _As if her being in just her underwear isn't scary enough, now she's backing me into a goddamn wall... _ "You 'think,' you 'guess'--" Her words grew more pointed, more sharp with each breath. _Scary!_ "Come on, Riku, don't you even _know_ anything as _simple_ as this?"

One delicate little hand shot out, grabbing Riku's own and forcefully planting it directly on her chest, just over the pink-polka dotted fabric of her bra. ...Much to Riku's dismay.

"Do you feel anything? Anything at all?" Kairi asked.

"No!" Riku wailed.

Kairi released his hand, which Riku promptly clutched to his stomach, buried in the ruined pair of sopping wet pants that had once been on Sora earlier that day. Somehow it may have made sense. _Negating woman germs with Sora's old pants? Freak. Freak, freak, freak!_

"Okay. And when you were with Sora? How about then? Did you feel anything then?"

"I gue-- Yes. Yeah, I mean. I did."

"Okay then. Now. Do you like Sora, do you dislike Sora, do you feel anything at all towards him? Because I _know_ he's got something for you."

"I never would have guessed."

"Riku Wataya, don't you dare dodge the question! Sora is very important to me and I'm not letting you anywhere near him if you're going to hurt him, got it?"

"What what do you want me to do?"

Kairi's voice softened slightly, her gaze turning almost apologetic as she asked, "What do _you_ want to do? Do you like him or not? It's really just that simple, Riku. There are no hidden questions, no ulterior motives. It's just this-- this simple, okay?"

Riku looked away, down towards his hands. He had the words, he was sure of it. He'd thought them over to himself before, but... saying them was a whole different matter. "He's... he's different. I don't mean it in a bad way. ...He's direct in speaking his thoughts and his feelings, but then he sort of... meshes the two together. Like, he has feelings for the things he thinks about, and that's what makes them important to him. I don't know if that makes sense, but..." _Why the hell can't I figure it out? It's not that hard, for God's sake. It's just a stupid, childish question..._

"Try again."

"I don't know."

"Okay." Her voice was completely back to normal now, a warm smile in place of the earlier scowl. Whether she fully trusted Riku with the heart of her best friend... well, that remained uncertain. But she finally took pity on the drenched boy sitting by her window, turning to him with a nod of her head and saying, "Come on, Riku Wataya. We'll get you some pants."

And not two minutes later, Riku stood outside Kairi's bathroom, toweling his hair dry while staring down at his legs, now clad in a powder-pink pair of pajama bottoms, decorated with glittery, stylized hearts.

"Kairi, could you..._ possibly_ have picked a worse pair of pants?"

The girl smiled sweetly, tying the cord of her bathrobe loosely around her waist, obviously catching onto Riku's discomfort earlier. "Look, Riku," she said. "It's either these or my jeans. And I **know** those would be too small for you, so it's gotta be these. M'kay?"

"This is embarrassing."

"Oh, a little embarrassment never killed anybody!" With a little laugh, she grabbed one of his wrists and led him down the hallway and into the kitchen with a "Come on, cheer up, Riku!"

"You haven't been stuck in your underwear for the past half hour."

"Mm. Actually, I've been in mine for three hours."

"...What."

"_Meditating_, you goof. It gets so hot sometimes I just do it stripped down. On a regular basis, it's not like anyone sees me doing it anyway." At this, Kairi smirked and raised one thin red brow. "Guess you just had to come on in and change that little factoid, huh?"

"I didn't _mean_ to..." _Trust me. If I'd known you were practically naked, I would've never even bothered. Honestly. Why can't girls just keep their clothes on? **Why?**_

"Hey, hey, I know that! Aww, I'm just kidding around, Riku." Kairi bustled around in the kitchen cupboards for a moment, looking at Riku over her shoulder with two glasses in her hands. "Milk?" she offered.

"No thanks."

"Hey, I said I was just joking... You're not sore about it are you?"

"No, I'm just thinking."

"Abooout?" Despite Riku's refusal, he found a glass of milk pushed in front of him, anyway as Kairi sat down across from him at the kitchen island counter. She regarded him with a knowing little smile, filling in his silence as she saw fit. "A certain blue-eyed somebody, no doubt. I can tell just be looking at you. You might not see it, Riku, but I can. There's something there. No doubt about it. Hey, I'm not going to push the issue or the button or anything, but... just what is it that makes you so afraid to admit it? You're not homophobic, are you? I mean, you _did_ just make out with him under a bus. ...You _did_ just get his pants off..."

Riku's eyes narrowed into a soft glare. "You're twisting that around."

"Perhaps."

Riku took a long sip from the glass Kairi had given him, staring into its depths for a moment before saying, "I'm not homophobic. I don't have a problem with who I am, Kairi. I'm not going on an angst trip about it, I'm not tearing myself up over it. I never have and I never will, okay?"

"Wow, that's the healthiest thing I've heard you say yet. If only every teenager could say that."

"It's not a big deal, Kairi."

Kairi smiled. "I know. That's why I'm proud that you know it, too." After letting Riku stew in his silence for another moment, Kairi drummed her fingertips against the countertop and asked, "So if that's not what's holding you up, what is it?"

"Difficult to explain."

"I gathered that part. But can you try?" She tilted her head to one side and pulled her mouth into a pleading little smile. "For me?"

"Do you _have_ to do that?"

"Ooh, but it's wor-king, isn't it? You don't have to like girls to fall victim to a little puppy pouting, Ri-ku Wataya!" While Riku groaned and Kairi laughed, the girl patted the boy on the arm and switched back into a more serious, meaningful tone. "I'm here for you, you know. I want to help."

Riku fell quiet again, no longer looking at his glass, but at his knees instead. His... pink, heart-covered knees. "...I can't even_ think _about thinking while I'm staring at these pants."

"Oh honestly, Riku! At least you've got a stupid sense of humor. _Here_, allow _me_. I'll go find something else you might _possibly_ be able to wear and you figure yourself out before I get back, got it? We're going to have one big girly heart to heart talk-- you and me, okay?"

"If you say so."

"I do! Now close your eyes or look away from those pants or something and get to _thinking_, Mr. Wataya!" With that, Kairi disappeared down the hallway and once more, Riku was left to his thoughts and his thoughts alone.

_Okay. I can do this. ...This is easy. Nooo problem. I'll just organize my head up and outline the crap I have to deal with, see how it all factors in to me not working like a normal human being, and... I'll go from there. Right. Easy. Piece of fucking cake._

_Item number one... when I think about things, my chest hurts. When I try and forget about it, or think about why my chest hurts, I get to thinking about the pills and the problems and the conditions and my chest hurts more. I could die at any moment. But I'm not depressed. I'm just missing parts. And I don't know when they went missing and I don't know how they went missing. When I'm around Kairi, I feel relaxed. When I'm around Sora I feel whole. And when I'm around my family, I feel like shooting myself._

_...That was all just item number one? Dammit. How the hell does organizing work anyway? I always hated fucking prewriting. Fucking organization. Fucking planning. ...Damn. It._

x x x

_"Riku, you're such an asshole, you know that, right?"_

_"Roxas! How can you say that? It's okay, Riku. I still love you."_

_"Get real. Riku knows where it's really at."_

_"Well if you're always so mean to him, don't be surprised when he decides you're not worth it."_

_"And just what's **that** supposed to mean, huh? Riku knows I put out. Right, Riku?"_

_"Come on, Riku, tell him he's got to treat you better! You don't have to take it."_

x x x

"Earth to Rikuuu!" Riku blinked, finding a hand waving in front of his face and pair of jeans dropped onto his lap. "Here!" Kairi chirped.

Holding the jeans up for observation, Riku blinked again. _Yep. Distressed denim, once again._ These are yours."

"Yeah, because I'm magically going to be able to pull a pair of boys' pants out of my ass?" Eyes wide, Kairi clapped one hand over her mouth, laughing nervously. "Oh! Sorry about that!" Not that Riku honestly cared about Kairi saying the word 'ass.' It wasn't as though that was really something he'd ever cared about. ...But speaking of ass, Riku was having quite a difficult time getting his into those jeans Kairi gave him.

"I don't think they'll fit..." Having tugged off the pajama pants and gotten the jeans almost on, the zipper proved to be quite the problem and Riku's face couldn't help but turn a slightly darker shade. _Dammit, why do these things have to be so tight?_ ...Not that Riku hadn't worn tight pants before. But he was more for appreciating the pants from afar. Not really embracing their tightness himself.

_WHY is my head so twisted? Just why?_

"Well, they're gonna _have_ to fit," Kairi insisted. "That's the biggest pair I've got. Aww, look now, they'll fit, seriously! Just suck it in!"

"I _am_."

"God, Riku, do I have to do everything for you?" Kairi rolled her eyes and dropped to her knees, batting Riku's hands away from the zipper and taking it upon herself to fix it up for him. Oblivious to Riku's discomfort and embarrassment, Kairi prattled on, carefree as ever. "Did you figure anything out, by the way? No holding out on me! Oh, and stretch your arms waaay up, okay? Ready?"

"Yeah..." Arms up, Riku stared at the ceiling, trying to rid his mind of the image of Kairi fiddling with his fly while also trying to form a coherent sentence at the same time. "There are just... things I'm busy dealing with. They don't involve Sora or anything else. They're just things I have to deal with."

"That's an awful excuse, Riku! And stretch harder or something-- this zipper's totally not budging unless I castrate you."

"**Please** don't do that if you can avoid it."

"I'll try. Anyway, what are some of these oh-so-terribly-important things you have to think about? ...I mean... No, they _are_ important, I was just joking, it--"

"Kairi, it's okay, really. It's not just that."

"Arms to _ceiling_, Riku. Stretch higher."

"I just can't think clearly. Something's... not connected or... something."

Riku let out a tiny yelp as he felt the back of Kairi's hand connect with his hipbone in a half-slap, the girl looking up at him with an impatient stare. "Your head and your heart aren't _supposed_ to be connected, Riku. Even **I **know that much. Even if the heart is just a muscle-- even if you throw all that scientific mumbo-jumbo at me. There has to be something, some _thing_ that makes people feel. That makes them honest-to-God affectionate towards another person. So for lack of a better word, I'm gonna say 'heart,' okay? It's a person's heart that does it. Not their head. At least, that's what I think."

Kairi's hands returned to the zipper, though she still kept talking, her voice not quite so harsh, not quite so loud. "The two don't belong together. Your head is where you do math. Where you store words and where you see pictures when you dream. Your heart is where it starts at, what makes you respond to the words and what makes you need your dreams to make your reality. Got it?"

"I'm not sure that makes sense."

"Maybe it doesn't. But that's just what I think. Seeing as _you're_ apparently incapable of sharing any thoughts or feelings, I figure that'll be enough for both of us." Kairi let out a frustrated huff of air, tugging furiously at the zipper once more. "Dang it, just two more inches-- come on!"

"Kairi?"

"Huh?"

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

Riku frowned slightly, cocking his head to the side. If he hadn't been worried that moving could be detrimental to his sex life forever, he might have turned around to check on the hallway, on the front doorway. "I could've sworn I--"

"Ugh, this stupid thing!"

"Hey, watch it, would y--!" And then he saw them. "Oh."

Kairi's parents.

"Kairi?"

"Hu-- OH!" The girl's mouth dropped open and she stared openly at her parents in dead shock for a moment before suddenly realizing just how compromising a position she was in and promptly ducking away from Riku, his pants,_ and_ his zipper with a nervous little laugh.

A big burly man decked out in business suit and tie-- _Gee, wonder who he could be?_-- advanced on Riku without a second thought, murder in his eyes and hands into fists. "Who the **hell** are **you**? Get the hell away from my daughter!"

"Daddy, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a--"

The woman in the doorway spoke up then, her voice loud, high-pitched, and absolutely the most obnoxious thing Riku had ever heard. It almost made the boy wished Kairi's dear father would punch him out right then and there, just to escape the woman's godawful racket. "Kai-ri, just wh-- what do you think you're doing? You, young man! Get--"

"Dad!"

"Get away from her!" 'Dad' bellowed.

"DAD!" Kairi darted back to Riku's side, trying desperately to position herself between her father and a rather dazed and confused Riku who couldn't seem to speak a word in protest against such an annoying couple. "What the heck's _wrong_ with you guys? It's not what it looks like!" Kairi exclaimed.

"You get the hell out of my house this fucking minute or I swear, so help me, I'll call the police."

"Daddy, no, come on, knock it off!"

"Kairi, don't you talk to your father that--"

"You're not even listening to me!"

"Why on earth would we listen to you when we come home to find you like-- like _this_, like some sort of--"

"Dad, I wasn--"

"Oh, _Kairi_, don't honestly expect us to belie--"

"I told you to get **out** of my house!"

"You can't kick him out!"

"Ohoho, I most certainly can!"

"Stop! He's my _friend!_"

As Kairi was shoved none-too-gently to one side, Riku found himself grabbed by the arm rather painfully, shaken around like a rag-doll as Kairi's father towered over him, hollering at his daughter, "Your friend? Your **friend**? Now you listen up, Kairi, and you listen up good-- I've had it up to _here_ with your sexual liberation crap. This is_ absurd_, this is _unsanitary_, and this is just damn _unhealthy_. Just where the hell did you pick him up anyway? For God's sake, Kairi!"

"I didn't pick him up anywhere, he's Mayako's--!" _Ah, crap. She just had to go and say it._

"Mayako? _Mayako_? That's it."

While Riku probably could have kicked the man in the balls, punched his eyes, jabbed him in the gut, and leapt out the window like a frickin' rip-off of Spider Man, he figured that for once, it would actually probably be better to remain detached and emotionless as he had his ass hauled down the hallway, out the front door, and into the wide open world. The only truly frustrating thing Riku managed to register during these moments as he was dragged across the yard... was the fact that it had stopped raining.

"Dad, stop!"

"Kairi, you get back here _right_ his instant!"

Sure enough, a backwards glance gave Riku a glimpse of the redhead scrambling along behind her father, running and slipping in the wet grass, grabbing for the man's shoulder, trying so hard to stop him. Riku tried to say something reassuring, really, but the words were jarred out of him as his captor came to Mayako's door and, with a thud, Riku was slammed against the side of the house.

"Dad!"

"Kairi!"

And his aunt yanked open the door...

"Mayako!"

"...Riku?"

"You tell your son--!"

"He didn't--!"

"I'm not her--"

"He's not my--"

"--to keep his sexual excursions out of our household, do I make myself clear on that? I don't know what the hell kind of ideas you put into these kids' heads, but this is just going too damn far! You're lucky if I don't bring the authorities into this matter! If I ever-- _ever_ catch sight of this boy again, you can bet I'll--"

"Riku."

"I _didn't_..."

Shockingly enough, it was Kairi who spoke next. Yes, it was _Kairi_ who let out a menacing little growl and stomped her foot and waved her arms wildly around, trying for all she was worth to get someone to listen to her--

"What is **wrong** with you people? I wasn't having sex with him. He had no pants and was locked out of his house. And you know _why_? Whyyy he had no pants? Because Sora's ripped while they were making out and Sora had no pants so Riku gave him his! Does that sound like a bad guy to you? For the love of God, the boy's gay, okay?" ...And in the ensuing silence, Riku shook his head, Kairi's father closed his gaping mouth, and Kairi... had a feeling that perhaps she may have just said something _slightly_ off.

"...Gay. ...As in. ...Happy," she tried.

"..."

"..."

"Well then how do you explain w-why you w-were--" Kairi's father stuttered lamely.

"The zipper got stuck. He's wearing my pants because he didn't have any."

"I see..." Clearing his throat awkwardly, Kairi's father nodded quickly, coughing once more. "Well. ...Uh. Riku." Cough, cough. "Good... evening to you. ...As you were. ...Kairi, come on."

As her father hurriedly strode back down the steps and across the lawn, Kairi lingered behind, only for a moment. "Riku, I didn't mean to..." She turned to his aunt, eyes wide and apologetic and trying so hard to make it better. "May, listen..."

"Kairi, you should go home now," Mayako said.

"But May..."

"Kairi."

Shooting Riku one last look, Kairi only remained reassured by his half-smile, his half-shrug in return. He tried to blow it off, to make it seem like no big deal. After all, hadn't he just earlier said he had no problem with who he was? Hadn't he... _just_ said that? If it was true, which Kairi was certain it was (for Riku would never** lie** to her, would he?), then everything would work out.

Everything would be okay.

And that was what Riku tried to tell himself as soon as the front door closed behind him and he found himself face to face with Mayako's full-blown rage.

"What the **hell** is wrong with you?"

"Don't talk to me like that..."

"Like_ wha_t? Like you did something _wrong_? Because guess what Riku? You did. You embarrassed me in front of Kairi's entire family, you made a scene that is undoubtedly going to make its way around the neighborhood within the hour. Just what sort of impression are you trying to make for yourself?" As Mayako fumed and folded her arms, it was all Riku could do to try and hold in the rage that had been building and building with each passing second. Yet Mayako's next words proved to be too much, just too much taken in at the wrong time. "Don't _think_ you didn't do anything wrong. Honestly."

"Well what was it I did that was so wrong, then!" Riku practically shouted, now furious and shaking with anger, resentment...

"Don't you dare raise your voice to me." _Hate._

"Well maybe if you tried _listening_ to me or to anyone else, I wouldn't _have_ to..."

"Take your medicine and go to your room."

"It's _not_ my room! _None_ of this is mine, don't you get it?"

Mayako's face twisted into an angry bitter thing, brows furrowed over her menacing green eyes, salt-and-pepper hair flying to the side as she jerked her head back around to face her nephew. "I can't _believe_ you! I open my home to you, I do everything I'm told, I feed you, I take care of you-- this hasn't exactly been easy on **me**, Riku!"

"...Easy on you? Easy on _you_? You lost a brother and a sister-in-law you_ rarely_ spoke to once a month. I lost a mom and a dad I saw every day. ...What makes you think I'm happy? What makes you think I'm okay?"

"You're such a selfish _brat_! All you ever think about is yourself!"

"Well if **I **don't think about me, who will? _You_?"

Riku's question plunged the room into a silence that startled both occupants, neither willing to back down in their glare or their threatening stance in the least. ...If stubbornness was a genetic trait, Riku clearly had received it from his father's side of the family.

"You straighten up your act right now. Do you hear me? You straighten it up. And you _deal_ with it." Mouth tightening into a hard line, Mayako spun on her heel and strode away at a near breakneck pace, nearly colliding with her husband in the process. Rather than an apology, she simply glowered and hissed, "**You** talk to him, dammit. I've had it."

x x x

"Riku?"

From his seat at the desk, Riku didn't bother to turn around. He propped his head on on his hands, tilted at a moody angle to fully face the wall. "Look," he said, "just because your wife says you have to talk to me? Yeah, that doesn't mean you actually _have_ to, okay?"

His uncle hovered in the doorway a moment. Riku could tell he wasn't gone, though. Mostly because the room's normal icy loneliness was still kept at bay by the fact that-- sweet son of a gun, there were_ two_ people in there! Socializing in the loner's bedroom. How odd. Scratching his head, the man moved towards the bed, but didn't dare to sit down. Instead, he stuck his hands in his pockets, chewed over his words for a good long moment, and finally decided to speak again.

"You know, uh, I once had a similar sort of... experience. Well, I mean, different, but, uh." Word chewing, word chewing... "A good friend of mine was g--" ...Word choking... "A good friend of mine was _gay_ once."

"...What." _So he was gay and then he wasn't? He was gay once? What the hell is this guy on? Oh wait. Better question. What the fuck is he doing in my room trying to talk to me? Does he honestly expect me to jump up and down with joy at the opportunity to lavish my love on a good old member of the fam? Bull. Shit._

Oblivious, Riku's uncle continued on, nodding slowly, speaking slowly, carefully. "Mmhm. We were grabbing some hamburgers at a drive-through one afternoon and parked nearby to stop and eat. He turned to me, told me he was madly in love with me and couldn't live without me. ...Er, something to that extent. Then he kissed me. Right then and there."

...Okay. Riku had to admit. His interest was mildly peaked. If only because his uncle seemed about as interesting as a clay brick. A heterosexual clay brick. "...What'd you do?" he asked, forcing his voice to maintain a careless drawl.

"I punched him." With a snort, Riku wheeled around to face his uncle, whose eyes promptly widened just ever so slightly. The man didn't _like_ that boy's glare-- it just freaked him the hell out. So he instinctively held up both hands with a nervous laugh-- "But that's not the point! What I _should _have done was calmly explain that there was no way it could have worked out between us and he was better off with someone else who could actually care about him in _that way_."

"...He kissed you. So you punched him."

"Big mistake. Almost never saw him again after that. A shame. A damn shame. He was a good guy."

Riku honestly had to fight himself to keep his lip from curling ever so slightly in disgust, to keep his fists from clenching. His uncle clearly had no idea what he was saying, what he was implying. _ ...Or maybe I'm reading it all wrong? Maybe he's not trying to be mean. Maybe he's really a decent guy at heart who made a mistake and is now trying to share the knowledge his emotional wounds bestowed upon him. ...Yeah RIGHT._ "So you don't know what happened to him?" Riku asked after a long, dead minute of silence.

He wasn't sure if he should've asked that question. Or rather, maybe it wasn't _that_ he wasn't sure about that, but... he wasn't sure about something. For the split second after the question left his mouth, his uncle almost seemed to shrivel up and cower away on the spot. The man looked towards the floor, the corner, the shadows on the wall-- anything for inspiration, anything to give him the words. "I've heard... some things," he said awkwardly. "None... of them very good." Shaking his head and clearing his throat, he fell back into himself and furrowed his brows in concentration, pegging the words now neatly, cleanly, precisely as he said, "The point_ is_, Riku, that whatever you are, whoever punches you in the jaw for it-- that's okay. You'll pull through. It's them making the mistake, not you."

Riku blinked. His uncle blinked. And finally Riku just rolled his eyes and turned back towards his wall. "You really suck at this, you know?"

"Hey, I'm trying."

"You don't _have_ to try, okay?"

"Listen, Riku. I'm not trying to take the place of your father. Hajime was a-- he was _above _me-- always was. I _know_ I could never replace him. And I know you don't think much of me and I can't blame you..." Those carefully thought through, precisely mapped out words? They died. They fell to pieces and the uncle became invisible once again, melting away towards the door in something so very similar to defeat.

So very similar that it almost, _almost _made Riku feel terribly guilty. That it almost made his heart pound, twist, wrench in that most troublesome manner.

"Hey." Turning around, Riku faced his uncle's retreating back, now paused in the doorway, waiting, waiting, waiting for the kid to continue. And continue he did, with more questions still-- quieter this time, filling up the space to make him feel wanted, needed, and craved. "What _did _happen to your friend? Or what did you _hear_ happened to him? ...What'd they tell you?"

"He... got married. To a woman. He had a child... a son. A beautiful baby boy."

"Why'd he get married if he was gay?"

"Maybe he didn't want to be lonely. He wanted to be happy, I guess."

"But was he?"

"To a degree, I'm sure he was. But I don't know more than that. He died a while ago."

Riku let his gaze drift steadily to the floor. Once there, they fell upon his shoes lined up by his bed, their bright little laces curling out around them, smiling out around them. They looked so damn happy.

"Why'd you punch him?" Riku then asked.

His uncle stood still, thought, and finally, he shrugged. "I didn't know what to say." He shrugged, yes, because he didn't know. Because there was no way he would ever truly be able to explain his reaction, harsh as it was. Because there was no way to explain that didn't involve ignorance, that didn't involve stupidity. That didn't,_ didn't_ involve some state of not-knowing.

"There are things you don't know, Riku. Things about this world, these people, this family, even, that you just don't know. That, perhaps, it's better if you never know."

"Don't _shelter_ me."

"We just worry about you, Riku. That's what we do. That's all we can do." And though Riku didn't see it, his uncle forced a half-smile for him, all he could do before he closed the door quietly on his way out. And solitude crept back in as silence made its troublesome way beneath the door and onto the bed. The two played poker and watched the boy, talked about the boy in their dead and nonexistent voices. And Riku this and Riku that...

And Riku didn't hear them because-- for the first time in what felt like ages-- he was feeling the full brunt of every single thing, every single emotion building up around him. His uncle's pity, his aunt's bitterness, Sora's affection, Kairi's concern, and, more than anything, his parents' absence from his life. _ For now and forever, isn't it? I'll graduate and they won't be there. Maybe I'll get married, adopt a kid-- no one there. I'll wake up tomorrow and, yeah, they won't be there, either._

With no medication to dumb it all down, Riku found himself crumpled in a heap, curled on his desk chair, heart twisting and wrenching and stabbing and gutting him alive from the inside out because he couldn't _not_ feel, because he couldn't disconnect his head from his heart, because he couldn't, couldn't, couldn't--

Hear the little voice just outside the cracked window.

"Riku! Ri-kuuu!"

"Sora?" And though he looked and looked, he could find no trace of pity on the boy's upturned face. Just curiosity, just affection. Just simple happiness. And Riku managed a smile as he rested his elbows on the window sill, head peering out and over to look down at the kid below.

"Hey. Uh... I heard from Kairi about..."

"Yeah."

"Man, I'm so sorry."

"It's not your fault."

Sora's mouth hung open for a moment before he snapped it shut, feet scuffing the front stoop in the dark of the night. Riku could barely make out something held in his hands, dangling by his sides. "Can you come down?" Sora finally asked, pulling Riku's attention back towards his face and his words.

"I don't want to risk it. Mayako's still up and prowling around somewhere."

"Oh... Okay..." Though he seemed slightly put-off, Sora still managed a bright grin as he suddenly remembered something, holding up his hands and the thing Riku had just gotten a glimpse of. "Hey, Riku! Catch!"

_...Out of context, this would probably be very, very odd. _ Riku blinked as his pants from earlier that day found their way into his outstretched hands, having been miraculously propelled up to his second-story window from Sora's scrawny arms. _ Not so scrawny, maybe._ Riku let out some half-laugh sort of sound, looking down again to find the boy turned to leave. "Sora," Riku said. "Thanks."

Stopping mid-turn, Sora wheeled around once more, grin still radiant as ever, laughter pulling at the corners of his bright little mouth. "Man, are you _still_ taking those pills?"

"I haven't today." _Do I really sound that stoned? Dear lord._

"Well good! Don't. I swear to God, right here, right now, I'm gonna make you back the way you were, okay? I swear." And Sora meant it. One stubborn, tan fist was clenched and waving in the air-- he sure as hell meant it.

"What if you don't like me the way I was? You don't exactly know what I used to be," Riku said.

"I don't need to." A grin was all it took-- a grin and that one simple, concise explanation. Sora smiled, tucked his hands into his pockets and scuffed the toe of one sneaker against the ground once more, fishing for the words. "So are you grounded or something?"

"Don't think so. I just got a lecture. ...Sort of." _ If you could call that a lecture. ...If you could call that much of anything at all. _

"So you don't wanna come on down and see me? You don't have to go downstairs. Just jump! I'll catch you!" Sora laughed and held out both arms, waiting and watching and smiling and...

"I don't think you could."

"You haven't let me try yet, have you?"

"True."

Shooting Riku a daring little smirk, Sora shrugged his shoulders and let out quite the dramatic sigh, hands coming to rest on his hips. "Not gonna jump, huh? Thaaat's okay, I understand." He cocked his head and went apologetic-- "I'm still sorry, you know?"

"Don't worry about it."

"...Hey Riku, have you ever pulled on a jacket you haven't worn in a year or so and found five bucks in one of the pockets? Feels great, doesn't it?"

_...Huh?_

"...Uh, I guess?"

"Okay! Just making sure." Sora's mouth stretched to its fullest grin once more, the hand that had earlier been clenched now flying up to the air in a wave. "See y'around, Riku!"

Smiling, Riku rested his elbows on the windowsill once more. "I can count on it?"

"Of course you can!"

And that, as they say, was that. Riku watched Sora's dark figure disappear into the night atmosphere, leaving him alone, just as he was before. _...Or maybe... not as much as I was before. Maybe different, somehow. _ He could only smile a little at the thought, smile and plop down on his bed, smile and study the open window.

_He **is** something. If everything else is nothing, if all I have is nothing, Sora must be something. _Riku's own fingers played with the hem of his t-shirt as he sat cross-legged at the foot of his bed. Opposite of him was his wall, gray and uninviting as ever. He knew it would only be a matter of time before he sunk back into the slump he'd been in earlier. Already he could feel himself coming down from whatever high Sora's presence had put him in. Yet... _It's something. _

After sitting for another good long moment, Riku suddenly had a brilliant flash of insight.

_Maybe I just need to be happy... maybe I just need to unwind like he said. Hell, maybe I could try meditating._

And so he did.

He lasted all of two minutes before he began to hear an nasty little ringing noise in his left ear. _Get real. If Kairi can do this, it's gotta be easy for me. I mean, seriously. I'm more calm than she is, for crying out loud. _

And while he managed to hang in there, it was only thirty seconds later that he felt his left foot falling asleep, an itch developing on the tip of his nose, and a strangely cold patch of skin developing on his lower back. _O-kay, Mr. Buddha. Time to start talking... Shouldn't I be feeling something by now? Or was I supposed to stop thinking...?_

The final straw occurred as a sneaky little tendril of silver hair managed to wriggle its way down his face, tickling his skin and irritating the living hell out of the poor distracted boy.

"Damn, how does she _do_ that?" With an arrogant huff of breath, Riku returned to staring at his wall, tilting his head to the side to get a different perspective-- or, if nothing more, to at least try to.

After having scratched his nose, adjusted his t-shirt, and stretched out his legs, Riku then stumbled across his second brilliant flash of insight for that evening, brought about only as his fingers closed around that pair of pants several inches away, ghosting over the seams, over the pockets, over the... piece of paper tucked so innocently, so cleverly inside.

Written in definitive, somewhat lopsided handwriting, the paper read:

_Dear Most Noble Riku Wataya! The Lady and myself-- but a humble servant of the court, of course-- request your presence tomorrow at The Lady's abode! There will be..._

This was all scratched out rather hastily with pink ink, crammed at the bottom the neatly-written words:

_Riku-- Up for dinner tomorrow? _

It fell back to the sloppier black-ink marks as in the very, very corner there was doodled a little clover-like symbol of clubs, followed the signature of 'Sora.' _Clubs? Why not a freakin' heart or something? Stupid kid. If you honestly have to choose a stupid card to... dammit. What the hell am I getting at..?_

Riku read the letter once more, than once more with feeling. 'Dear Most Noble Riku Wataya! The Lady and myself...!' Pink ink with neat writing, black ink with sloppy writing. Either Sora had one hell of a split-personality disorder or he'd had a little bit of assistance in writing his backasswards invitation. _ Gee, I wonder who gave him a hand. _Riku could see it now...

x x x

_"Ugh, do you have any idea what you're saying, Sora? You're so lame! Riku'll never go out with you if you keep joking around like that!"_

_"I'm not joking! I'm serious!"_

_"Well you guys aren't having dinner over here, got it? Go somewhere else! Like in a public place where most people go on dates!"_

_"But I like your cooking... And it's free."_

_"GAH! Just give me that, you're gonna mess it up even more!"_

x x x

But rather than annoyance, Riku suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a surge of... fondness for the two of them. Kairi and Sora. The two were so similar, yet so completely different at the same time. And while he probably depended on both of them to get him through the summer at least somewhat sane... he depended on them in completely different ways.

_Maybe..._

It was then he noticed a slight smudge in the paper. Some ink had bled through from the other side, and as Riku flipped the note over, he finally caught a glimpse of the words he'd missed earlier, written in sloppy black ink, simply stating: _"Maybe Eden ain't so lonesome as New England used to be."_

(x) (x) (x)

UGH. HUGE CHAPTER. I swear not to make it so huge next time.

...Yarharhar. Eden and New England quote snagged from the poetry of Jack Kerouac, who will become an important instrument of plot later on. Speaking of plot, this fic does have one, I swear. ...It's just a little slow in coming! ...Don't you worry!


	4. Eau De Empty

**Suburbia**

'Eau de Empty'

Summer days were repetitive.

Riku knew he had overslept before he had even opened his eyes. ...Mostly he knew simply because it was so damn difficult to open his eyes in the first place. He'd already fallen into the mental summer haze of one day blending into another, blending into another. _But oh, that's right. Yesterday I was accused of molesting the girl next door after wandering listlessly around the neighborhood for three hours in my underwear. Now I remember. Yep. It's all coming back to me now, goddammit._ The silver-haired teen took his time rolling out of bed, only forgetting at the last minute that feet were required for standing, thereby kissing the bedroom floor no sooner than the moment his body left the mattress.

Face-down upon the floor, Riku allowed it all to sink in for one golden moment, eyes closed and pressed into the carpet. _I would say this is unlike me, _he thought to himself, _but lately... who knows. This could be the new norm._

Having uprighted himself at long last, Riku poked his head out the bedroom door and listened a moment. No sound of the aunt anywhere-- the uncle would be at work. ...Good. Gooooood. Riku yawned widely, scratching his head while he began to shuffle down the stairs, relatively at ease in the house now that it--

_Hold up a minute._

Riku blinked, foot hovering midair on the stairwell, poised between one step and the next. Something was off. Backtrack. Walking backwards up the stairs, Riku frowned. Nothing amiss in the hallway. He backed into the guest room, paused, and spun around. Right past the crumpled mess of sheets and quilts spilling onto the floor was a neat stack of cardboard boxes, some labeled 'FRAGILE,' others not labeled at all.

_My stuff from home... _ Riku glanced at the clock which diligently reported that it was well past noon. No wonder everyone was gone. Most people had lives on a weekday afternoon. _I guess it all finally shipped here... but who brought it all the way upstairs?_

Making another go at the stairway, Riku noticed still more boxes piled by the front door, sun spilling through the side windows and zagging across the cardboard, dust motes floating and landing with their usual lazy grace. He was feeling unusually observant, that morning, Riku was. ...That afternoon, that is. Was. Noon. ...At any rate. By the time he finally made it to the kitchen, it was all Riku could do to smother a girly yelp as a voice pierced the silence and startled the hell out of him.

"Don't you absolutely **hate** it when you shake and shake the box like crazy, but the cereal still won't come out?" Kairi sat at the kitchen table, scowling darkly at the cereal box in hand, which she was indeed shaking rather violently. Heaving a mighty sigh, the girl gave up and promptly stuck her hand right in the box itself, shoveling out a gritty looking cereal into her bowl, all the while prattling on, "Mayako let me in. She said you were still sleeping and she had errands to get to. _Oh_ Riku Wataya, what're we gonna do with you, huh? Sooo _la-zy_. Wh-- hey!" Her scowl was redirected at the boy towering above her, filled cereal bowl balanced between his two hands.

"Hungry?" he asked with a sleepy sort of half smirk.

"There's no food at my house!" Kairi whined.

"...This stuff looks disgusting."

"I'm a beggar, _not_ a chooser." Snatching the cereal bowl back with little to no qualms from Riku, Kairi waved her spoon around dramatically, artfully changing the topic as she did so. Her eyes were on the boxes still piled near the front doorway. Riku couldn't help but think that those boxes looked more intimidating somehow than the ones he'd discovered tucked upstairs earlier. _Boxes? Intimidating? Get real._

"Hey, what's all this _stuff_ around here anyway?" Kairi asked.

"Old stuff we couldn't bring on the plane with us. I guess it just finally got here this morning."

"_Your_ stuff?"

Riku shrugged, leaning against the door-frame and looking off at nothing in particular. "Some of it's probably my parents'," he said, "but I think most of it's mine. Can't take everything, though, you know."

"Can't leave everything behind, either." At that, Riku looked towards Kairi, but she was pondering the cereal heaped in her spoon when she said, "Rough," when she carefully avoided any and all contact with his blazing green gaze.

"Whatever." _Just drop it._ He turned away, intent on finding something halfway decent to eat, if nothing else. He settled for yogurt, even though he hated yogurt. He figured he'd probably just pitch the rest of it eventually. All it was was curdled milk. No one would care. How fitting. _Observant, observant. God, please don't let this be another blue panda rainy day._

Riku ignored Kairi's intense stare, only lasting a moment's time before she broke away, spoon clattering noisily against the side of the bowl in some vain attempt to get the cereal to soak up some milk. Head turned to one side, she looked out the kitchen window and heaved a little sigh. She said, "It's so **hot** out today... Nobody can do anything when it's so hot out, you know? It's _horrible_."

Riku's grunt of agreement did nothing to further conversation. All it seemed to successfully do was throw the room into a deeper silence-- Kairi thoughtfully chewing on her bottom lip as she continued to push her cereal around the bowl, Riku wincing as he downed a mouthful of yogurt. Riku wondered if he should check up on her, make sure her parents didn't light into her over yesterday's little fiasco. ...He _did _have his fair share of questions he wanted cleared up. Like what exactly Kairi's parents had meant when they'd brought up the issue of "sexual liberation." He figured they were talking about Sora or... _something_ to do with Sora.

Sora was quite the sexy little bastard, after all.

"Look, why are you being so nice to me?" Riku asked after another long moment of silence. _Okay, not the question I was going for there, but hey. It's a start._

"Huh?"

"Since I got here. Why are you being so nice to me?" Riku pressed.

Kairi continued to look blankly at him for another few moments before letting out a girlish little giggle and shaking her head. "Because you're a cool guy, Riku Wataya! Come on!" After a slight pause, a devious smirk settled across her face and her voice took on a pleasant sing-songy quality as she chided, "Are yo-ou fishing for comp-li-ments?"

"No, I'm not. I just..." Riku trailed off. How could Kairi honestly expect Riku to take her kindness seriously if she always talked about everything as though it didn't matter? As though it were all some stupid joke? Whether the girl picked up on this thought or not, her mood instantly changed and her voice actually dropped a notch, her chair pushing against the floor as she stood. Riku turned to face the window, hoping she wouldn't come anywhere near him. He didn't really know why. He just didn't want her there.

She was too much like...

"Look, Riku. I'm especially nice to you because you look like a sad little kid who needs a hand. And I've got 'em. Everyone here's got 'em, just some people choose not to use 'em." He felt her arms wrapping around his middle in some sort of backwards hug, arms and hands stretched out for him to see. With her palms towards the ceiling and her chin against his shoulder, Kairi smiled. "See?'

"I'm _hardly_ a sad little kid. Do you mind?"

"No, actually, I don't. There's something _about _you, Riku. It's not your looks or your muscles. It's unique, strained, and burning up to a crisp around here, but I want to save it. I want to pull it out of you, put it in a glass box, and look at it every single morning." She laughed and pulled herself away from Riku, oblivious to the sigh of relief that escaped his mouth a split second later while she continued, "But of course I won't do that. Then I wouldn't have you!"

Turning from the window, Riku couldn't help but keep a small smile from tugging at the corner of his mouth. "You're really... kind of a freak."

"Yeah, yeah." Kairi waved it off and promptly washed her cereal bowl out in the sink before turning around with a sudden burst of inspiration, hands clasped together beneath her chin. "Say, let's go for a walk! What do you say? It'll be fun!"

Riku could've commented on her sudden abandonment of her cereal idea-- the bowl had been nearly untouched when she'd pitched it into the sink-- but he pushed the thought aside. Settled for the obvious instead. "You said it was hot outside."

"Well, _duh_. It's **summer**, you crazy-head."

"...Crazy-head?"

"Let's go!"

"I'm not exactly dressed."

"Oh come on, Riku Wataya! Everyone's already seen you in your _boxers_-- makes no difference if it's your pajamas now!"

"Your concern for my better welfare just overwhelms me."

"I love you, too, darling."

"Get off."

Riku avoided looking at the boxes stacked beside the door as he and Kairi made their way out and into the blinding summer sunlight of the afternoon, Riku still wearing a thin pair of baggy striped cotton pants and a small white tee. It could have been so much worse. Still, he made a point of not meeting anyone's gaze as he walked at Kairi's side, suddenly paying rapt attention to the daily hummings and drummings of sprinklers and lawnmowers alike.

"So he-ey, what's on your schedule for today, hm?" Kairi finally asked. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail place high on her head, swinging her tan arms around and upping their pace a notch. Riku tried not to notice. Not to notice, not to notice, just to keep up and keep moving and keep not-noticing the giggles from some little kid they'd just walked past.

_It always feels like they're laughing right at me._

"Uh, Sora swung by last night," he said.

"Oh did he now? _Really?_ And what'd our little friend have to say?"

Now, Riku knew for a fact at that point that Kairi knew exactly what the note contained. For all that she was a perfectly lovely and charming girl, she couldn't act worth crap-- as Riku probably should have guessed much, much earlier. Still, he just shrugged his shoulder and met her gaze halfway between them with a stubborn sideways glance and a sly twitch of a smile.

"Nothing much," he nearly drawled. "Nothing _you'd_ care to know, anyhow."

"Ri-ku! Don't _do_ that! Come on, don't you _dare_ hold out on me. It's because of me that you even met him at all!"

"You act like you've done me such a big favor."

"Well I have, haven't I? Let's face it, Riku. You guys are quickly becoming--" With a flourish, Kairi linked her two index fingers together as one hooked over the other, a grin spread on her face as she declared it-- "--an item!"

And in a similar mocking fashion, Riku clapped his hands together beneath his chin and jabbed his voice up a notch. Or two. Or three. "Oh an **i**-tem? **Real**-ly?"

"Don't make fun of me!" Scowling, Kairi threw up her arms in exasperation at Riku's chuckle and lack of any real response. "Seriously, Riku," she whined, "Come ooon! What'd Sora say?"

_If she honestly wants to hear what she wrote in the first place so damn badly..._

"He just wants to go out to dinner," Riku said simply.

"Oh, really? That's great!"

"Hmm, so why do I get the feeling you already knew about it?"

"What_eve_r could you _possibly_ mean, Riku Wataya?"

"You wouldn't by chance happen to own a pink ballpoint pen, would you?"

"Hm, I was worried that would give it away." Kairi smiled and laughed a bit, but waved the noise off with her own two hands, flipping them back and forth through the air. "Hey now, don't go thinking Sora's some spineless little goofball who needs me to do everything for him," she began. "I mean, well, okay, so sometimes he _is_ a spineless little goofball who needs me to do everything for him, but not _all_ the time, you know! Sometimes he just needs a... uh... well, a little bit of a push in the right direction. Get it?"

"I get it, I get it."

"Besides, who in their right mind would've said yes to some stupid invitation like the one **he **wrote?"

"I thought it was cute."

"Of course you did, Riku Wataya. Just like this, remember?" She linked her fingers together again, proudly holding them up for Riku to see. '_Just like this!'_

"Whatever you say, Kairi."

The two walked on in companionable silence for some time after that, reaching the top of the street and proceeding to loop around the block in one broad circle. Riku couldn't tell what Kairi was thinking-- then again, he'd never really been much of a mind-reader to begin with-- but he couldn't stop from noticing the distant expression that had settled over her face. Almost as though she were asleep and awake, dead and alive, sitting and dancing and laughing and crying all in one and all at the same time.

Needless to say, it was just a little disconcerting. And if Riku had been anyone but Riku, perhaps he would've followed through with that impulse to show that he cared, to imply that he really, truly, honestly did give a shit about what she thought and about what the world was doing to her. But he stayed quiet. He waited until she felt the urge to speak again.

And speak again she did. Though not with the same lighthearted tone as she'd been using nearly all morning.

"Look, I was serious yesterday when I said not to hurt Sora. Ever since Hayner, he just hasn't been the same..."

"Hayner?"

Kairi's eyes grew wide, their message clear in stating that **crap**, the poor girl said too much. Instantly, she clamped her front teeth down hard on her bottom lip, wincing and whining, "Don't tell Sora I told you. Okay? I _mean_ it. You never heard his name."

"Okay, but who's Hayner?"

"It's not important."

"You're lying."

"You sound just like him."

"Who?"

"Sora." Catching Riku's rather blank and confused look, Kairi huffed an impatient little sigh and waved one hand through the air dismissivly. "_You _know. 'You're lying.' Sora always knows."

Oh. That was right, wasn't it. That... game.

_"Let's play a little game, Riku! Whaddya say? Just until Kairi gets back, m'kay?" Not waiting for a response, Sora popped a cherry tomato in his mouth with obvious cheer, chewing and swallowing before continuing, "One of us'll say something-- a fact. Only it can be false. Or it can be true. True, false, got it? And the other person has to guess which one it is."_

Between Kairi's female intuition and Sora's natural inclination to pick truth from lie... Riku had never felt more trapped in all his life as he did in that one split second. The one split second in which he was forced to realize his horrid fate of never being able to truly, _truly_ lie to these new people he'd been thrown up again.

_God. ...**Damn**... it._

But, all that aside, there was still one question pressing at the back of his mind.

"Kairi?"

"Yeah?"

"Who's _Hayner_?"

"A friend." Kairi's head moved up and down like she was trying to nod, but fighting against the better judgement of her brain. Riku raised one elegant silver brow and she barked out a rather unlady-like laugh-- "HEH!"-- before giggling nervously and prattling off, "Me 'n Sora almost had sex once!"

And what a topic-changer it was.

_Well. What to say to **that** one._ "...Oh."

"Well, it's just that we were friends so long and were so _close_ and all that. I wanted him to be my first and I told him so. But he couldn't do it. ..._You_ know what I mean. It was funny, actually. We were going out back then, and then he told me about Hayner... It wasn't so funny at the time, but kids make mistakes, you know?" Kairi smiled brightly at Riku, but even her cheerfulness couldn't cover the hint of sadness hanging at the corner of her mouth. It made Riku frown a little, made him sad a little, just to see Kairi like that. Not completely broken apart even, just not content, just a sold a little short on so many levels.

How must it have felt to find out that the one boy you were closest to-- the one boy you'd invested everything in-- could never possibly love you the way you wanted him to?

"Hayner and Sora were screwing around. Just a little bit. ...Okay, so more than a little bit," Kairi explained. "Look, don't think Sora's easy or anything. Don't think _any_ of us are easy or anything."

"I didn't. I don't."

"Good." Kairi was nodding again, her fingers anxiously tugging on a beaded bracelet looped around her wrist. It looked childish hanging there-- too big for her slender arm and too bright a shade of pink for her age. "But anyway... To make a long story short, Hayner was a big deal for Sora and then he wasn't. Because he did a lot of bad things and made a lot of bad choices."

"But kids _make_ mistakes... Didn't you just say that?"

"Hayner didn't make kid mistakes." Kairi pursed her lips. She seemed to be staring rather intently on the spots of shadows stretching out beneath her and Riku, and she then drew them both to a halt, sneakers scuffing on the concrete, shadow stilling and standing. Her eyes flashed something warning, something dangerous that Riku would never, _never_ have expected to see from her. "Don't _ever _mention Hayner to Sora, got it? I'm only telling you so maybe you can understand."

"Understand what?"

"Sora, of course."

x x x

Kairi had bid Riku a short farewell after their walk, saying she had to get over to Rikku and Paine's for piano lessons. Riku wasn't entirely sure how he should approach that-- Kairi had never exactly mentioned piano lessons before-- but seeing as he wasn't one of the elite two blessed with truth-telling abilities, he let it slide. And in similar sliding fashion, he watched his medication slide off the palm of his hand, hit the bottom of the sink, and roll slowly, steadily towards the drain.

When he heard the clack of heels against the hardwood, he jerked on the tapwater and away the capsules went. No one would be the wiser.

Mayako stood in the doorway, oblivious to her nephew's actions, looking in the mirror across the wall in the hallway. Her hair was lightly curled, a thin layer of makeup applied, and if Riku hadn't told himself he had to dislike her with as much of himself as he could muster, he might have actually complimented her on just how well she looked. Things being as they were, he just fell silent and blinked at her, especially when she began to talk.

"Riku, get a move on, you're going to be late."

_Late?_ "...Late for what?"

"Your appointment."

"What appointment?"

"With the doctor."

"With _what_ doctor?"

Scrunching up her nose slightly, Mayako shot him some repressed form of a glare as she snapped, "The _psychiatrist_, Riku. Honestly. Get it together."

"Since when do I have a shrink appointment today? _Here_?" He'd only ever seen that one stupid quack back home on the islands. After his parents' death. While the entire ordeal was far from helpful, he'd at least had the benefit of knowing the guy and knowing that right outside, right down the lane, was a beach and an endless supply of open air he could drink himself silly on after sitting so still in some crazy's office for so. Damn. Long.

Oblivious to his thoughts, Mayako brushed it all off as ignorance and scooped her purse up off the kitchen table, shouldering it with an easy sort of grace. "You've had the appointment for a _while_, Riku. Come on. You'll be late."

Suddenly it hit Riku. _Of course I can't go. I'm supposed to do something with Sora later, right? I still need to get his number from Kairi, or... or figure out where he lives or something! Now that **Kairi** knows that **I **know about the-- Jesus, this is impossible_. Furrowing his eyebrows together, Riku fought to keep his voice civil. He didn't want a screaming match-- he just wanted to get... well, what he wanted. Which was dinner with Sora. _Away_ from his aunt.

"I don't care if I'm late-- I can't go. I've already made plans."

"Well your plans are just going to have to be remade, okay? This appointment has been set for a while now and you're not backing out of it. Now come on, get in the car." She didn't leave any room for argument. The keys were in her hand, she was headed for the door.

"How long is it supposed to take?" Riku asked desperately. He nearly smacked himself upside the head for all the damn desperation leaking from his voice.

Mayako paused, shot him a quizzical, annoyed look, and insisted, "**I** don't know, Riku. _ Longer_, if we're late, okay?"

"Wait... '_We_'?"

"I have an appointment, too."

"_You_ see a _shrink_?"

Now her eyes really were narrowed into a truly agitated glare as she brushed her hair loosely over one shoulder and heaved a sigh. "Most people need to see psychiatrists, Riku. It's just that few are smart enough to actually know it's good for them."

"You see a shrink," he said again, still completely unable to grasp that one solid little fact. _Dear lord, my aunt's crazy, too? Is this thing genetic or something? Why the hell am I living with a crazy person? What were my parents thinking, dumping me with her?_

"The term is _psychiatrist_, Riku."

"It's the same thing."

"One is derogatory."

"Picking apart people's_ heads _is a derogatory thing to do!"

"Stop being a child and get the car."

He didn't know what to do. There wasn't anything he could do, really, except suck it up and hope and pray that they got home early enough for him to still make it out to see Sora. But it was already so late... and those stupid appointments took so long... and now he apparently had to wait for his crazy aunt to see a damn doctor, too. But aside from whining and complaining pointlessly and short of tying Mayako to a chair and leaving her there-- which he had to admit was actually a very tempting option-- there was still nothing he could do.

He followed his aunt mutely out the door and down the sidewalk, sliding into her car without another word, actually having to fight back every nasty, angry, vengeful word that threatened to bubble up and out of his mouth. Some part of his brain actually had the sense to wonder about that-- _Big deal, it's okay. You can reschedule with Sora. Chill out. Why are you so damn angry? _

But that one, tiny part of the brain was obliterated by the words that just couldn't be held back any longer.

"Why do you always pick a fight with me about everything I say?" Riku asked.

"Oh, that's _rich_, Riku. Really. Like you're a complete innocent in all this."

"I don't go out of my _way_ to disagree with you!"

"Could you spare me? Please? Just this once, Riku. For _crying_ out loud, can we just go _one day_ without you jumping down my throat?"

x x x

_"Why are you always acting like everyone's out to get you, Riku?" he snapped. There was a dull thud-- probably the kid's hand slamming against the table in frustration. Frustration, frustration..._

_"Why do you always make it out to be you against everyone else? The world... isn't the stupid battleground you think it is, Riku. People have feelings, okay? Don't you even fucking get that? There's more to it than just you and me bitching at each other all the time, okay? **Okay**?"_

x x x

Riku shook his head, a jarred lock of silver hair stabbing him in the eye in the process. _Oww_.

He blinked owlishly at the podgy old man seated across from him in the office he found himself sitting in. Dark wood, plush chairs, books and nicknacks and nameplates and awards. And in the middle of it all, the prodigal professor of the human brain.

"So. ...Who're you?" Riku asked after a very long, very awkward silence.

"I'm Doctor Jones." The man's smile was extraordinarily fake, Riku decided. He already hated him. "And you must be Riku Wataya. It's a pleasure to meet you, Riku. Won't you have a seat?" Riku was already sitting. Another mark against this crazy Jones fellow. "Now then. That better? Good, good. Now why don't we start at the beginning."

Jones allowed the room to fall into silence, possibly expecting Riku to pick up the line. Riku just stared at him rather passively. Rather... passive aggresively, actually. Clearing his throat, Jones leant forward, elbows resting on the polished hardwood desk positioned between him and his client. "How was your relationship with your parents?" he prompted. "We'll start with your mother. How were things between you and your_ mothe_r?"

"...Good."

"Things were...? _Well_?"

Ignoring the grammatical correction, Riku grit his teeth once and only once. "They were _good_," he repeated.

"Did you feel you could talk to your mother about almost anything? I understand how difficult it is for a boy your age to often maintain a stable line of communication between himself and his mother. Do you feel that was at all a problem in your home?"

"Not really." A dull, aching silence followed this. The doctor stared at Riku and Riku was content to stare right on back for as long as it took. He hated feeling like it was his responsibility to hold up a conversation on the road to nowhere and was determined to shift that very responsibility into Mr. Dr. Whatever-he-was-Jones' capable, ugly, fat old hands.

"Riku, I'm only going to be able to help you if you... perhaps give me a bit-- well, a bit more to work with, you understand?" Jones leaned forward again, this time further over the desk, hands coming to clasp together beneath his chin. "Do you understand what I'm getting at, Riku? I am trying to help, after all."

"...I honestly don't think you can help _anyone_ at all."

"Well, maybe you think that now, but you haven't really given me a chance now, mm?" The man picked up a pen that looked all too fragile held between his two sausage-size fingers. He drummed it against the desk, above a pad of paper that was no doubt intended to take notes on the sob story Riku refused to spill. Still, Jones pressed onward, ever the... courageous shrink. "Perhaps you could describe your mother for me. In detail please. Let's just give it the old college try, shall we?"

"My mother was attractive. She had silver hair like mine and all the guys at school wanted to bang her." Riku blinked. "That good enough for you?"

"Perhaps more about her... _personality_. Your..._ relationship_ with her."

"Look, I don't see how any of this is really your business."

"Riku--"

"I'm only here because I have to be here."

"You're here because you've suffered a great loss and it is best is we work to mediate the current situation before it--"

"Before it what? Gets worse?" Eyes narrowed into dangerous slits, Riku growled, "Look, asshole, it can't _possibly_ get any worse."

The psychiatrist seem to look at Riku thoughtfully for a moment before jotting down something on his pad of paper. _Go ahead, fucker_, Riku thought. _Write down what a crazy asshole I am. I don't really care anymore. Give me more meds-- I'll flush them straight down the goddamn toilet if the sink can't handle it._

"How about between you and your aunt?" Jones asked after another pause.

"This is supposed to be about my parents."

"Do you feel comfortable in your new home?"

"No." _It's not my home._

"What could be done to make you feel more at home?" Scribble, scribble. Jones plucked up a pair of spectacles from the desktop, placing them on the bridge of his nose and only succeeding in making his face look all the huger, in Riku's humble (and angry) opinion. "Perhaps some friends...?"

"I have them."

"Oh? So soon? That's excellent news, Riku. Excellent, excellent news." More scribbles, a nod here and there. And then-- "Are you sexually active?"

"I never understood that question," Riku drawled.

"...Are you currently in a sexual relationship?"

"Aren't most 'relationships' sexual in some way?"

"Are you, Riku, _involved_ in a relationship in which you _partake_ in _sexual intercourse_?"

"No."

"I see." _Was that a sigh I heard, Jonesey boy? Gee, I wonder if you're frustrated. Damn, but I hope so._ Jones looked up from his notepad for a moment and Riku was almost-- key word:_ almost_-- afraid he'd spoken the words aloud. But no, Jones just waved one giant hand around and tactlessly added, "And please, _do_ tell me if you start to feel self-conscious in any way, mm?"

"Whatever."

"Do you masturbate on a regular basis?"

"I never understood that word."

"...Which word, Riku?"

"_Regular_. I **know** what masturbation is."

"Regular. ...When was the last time you masturbated, Riku?"

"How does this at all relate to my mental stability? Do you get paid to judge how horny a kid is or what?"

"Generally, abnormalities in the sex drive are the result of a significant change in stress level." Jones wasn't writing anymore. He was just staring at the teenager across from him with a rather drawn, tired expression. "Please answer the question if you're comfortable with it, Riku."

"Three months."

"Excuse me?"

"Three months." Riku smirked. "Since I jerked off."

"That is quite a long time for a boy your... age."

"What, am I supposed to do it every night before I go to bed? The ceremonial wank or something?"

"Not necessarily." Clearing his throat, the psychiatrist took up the pen once more, staring at it for a very long moment, almost as though willing it to start writing by itself. No such luck. He babbled on senselessly, filling the silence and trying to pull information. But getting anything from Riku was like peeling the skin off a baby. ...You just couldn't do it without breaking down and crying.

"So the last time you masturbated was three months ago. Let's see... that would put us somewhere back in March, I believe? Yes, the month of your parents' unfortunate accident." Jones stared pointedly at Riku after that last statement, watching for Riku's reaction. ...There was none. The boy stared back blankly, nonchalantly. Even the rebellious glimmer was absent from his stare.

But after a minute or so, Riku blinked. He'd missed his cue. He was supposed to say something or do something remarkable and he'd just sat there with all the grace of a dead animal.

"What?" he asked.

"Do you think your parents' deaths caused you to stop pleasuring yourself?"

Riku simply shrugged, looking off to the side, eyes resting on all the bookshelves lining the walls. _Books... God, I should be with Sora. Not in this shitty old office building. What a bunch of fake... crap. This guy doesn't even know what he's doing._ "March was different."

"As in...?"

"As in, there was a point when I didn't need to masturbate for sexual pleasure. Get it?"

"So you were sexually active in March, I take it?"

x x x

_"Roxas..."_

_"Shit, I told you n-not to..."_

x x x

"...Yep, that'd be it."

"I see. And following your parents' deaths, did you lose ties with that relationship?"

x x x

_"And that's when we fucked in the shower!"_

_"Eww, Riku, I used that shower this morning. Yuck! That's just gross. And... just... unsanitary."_

_"We were in a shower, for crying out loud. It's full of sanitary things, Mine. Besides, maybe this just means it's about time you--"_

x x x

"With... with what relationship?" Riku tried not to wince, not to show he was suddenly fighting off a pounding headache. No, not headache. Some all-out attack on his entire body. Everything hurt-- every damn limb was suddenly throbbing with a sharp pain that all streamlined straight up his spine and into his brain. _Overload, overload... Shit. What the hell is this? What relationship...? What are we talking about?_

"With the person you were sexually active with."

"Our relationship was _only_ sexual," Riku grit out.

_God, stay out of my head... Why now? It's not even like I'm thinking about it anymore. It's over with. Done for. That life isn't mine anymore. It's--_

x x x

_"Roxas!"_

x x x

_Get the **fuck** out of my head!_

"_Only_ sexual? Oh." Jones was writing like a madman then, hand nearly punching holes through the paper with every move. One page full, he flipped it, watching Riku, ripping him apart with his eyes and his spectacles and his brain behind it all. "Oh, I_ see_." God, Riku could just feel the man pinning diagnosis after diagnosis on his each and every move. "Did you have any close _friends_ back on the islands?"

"Yes."

"Why don't you tell me about them?"

"One was an artist, the other was an athlete. A blitzer. He was my fuck buddy, she was my sister substitute." _Wait-- **what**? Why the fuck am I telling him this? _ "Need anything else?"

"A bit more detail would always be appreciated."

"Well, maybe that's all you're getting today. I'm feeling little self-conscious all of a sudden."

The ache was dying down. Riku was closing up. Meanwhile, dear Doctor Jones was scrambling to grab hold of whatever was left in the wake of that mild... well, whatever-it-had-been.

"Riku, why don't you tell me about what's been bothering you lately, hm? You have yet to have another attack, it seems, but your aunt informs me that you've been acting strange these past few days. I trust you've been taking your medication?"

"Yeah."

"And you do realize that any anomilies in your lifestyle may prolong or worsen your condition?"

"Yeah."

"So?"

"So what?"

"Riku, I want you to take a serious look at what you're going to do with your life from this point on." The guy brought his hands together, steepled fingers and all. Riku knew it was all about to head downhill at a breakneck speed. And oh, but how he wanted to make a run for the door. ..._Too late_. "With your parents gone, you have a reasonably safe amount of capital to receive when you're of age, but it's the after-that you have to be thinking about. I understand their death has laid you a heavy blow and it's not to be taken at all lightly. These wounds will take time to heal and can't be rushed..."

_Oh gag me with a spoon, for God's sake. Is this guy for real?_

"...I'd like to know what your thoughts are. I only want to help. We all just want to help you, Riku. Now then. We have five minutes left in our session. Please." He gestured towards the tape recorder on his desk. Riku took that as being some sort of sign he should speak. And the ensuing silence only seemed to back up this thought all the more.

But he didn't have anything left to say. His body didn't hurt anymore, it just didn't feel... attached. Like somehow, somewhere along the way, he'd just lost contact with it. And so the five minutes passed in an agitated silence. Riku left the room and Mayako entered-- door swinging shut behind her. It was six o'clock when Riku got out of his appointment. Eight, by the time Mayako was out of hers.

"Don't forget to take your medicine," she said when they got home. "It's already late."

Down the drain-- another set of pills. Riku watched them roll as he had done before and he turned the faucet on in their wake. He looked at the clock-- late, so late, too late for anything-- and went up to the guest room. All of the boxes that had been downstairs had joined the others in the room, neatly stacked against a wall. Riku sat on the bed, closed his eyes and thought.

This is getting me nowhere. The shrink, the pills, the change of fucking scenery... It's all just looped. I keep ending up where I started. It still hurts. It won't fucking go away.

Inside the first box he opened were some of his mother's clothes. Most had been donated to charity, but Riku had taken some-- just a precious few-- to keep. He didn't know why he'd done it at the time, really. It had just made sense. Her light blue sun-dress and her favorite floral printed skirt peered up at him from the depths of the cardboard, still partially wrapped in tissue paper for safe-keeping. Still soft, still smooth, still ready to be worn by someone who would never--

Don't think like that. God, don't think like that.

The second box contained some of Riku's things-- his desk lamp, assignment book, pencils, pens, and various other whatnots that he couldn't ever remember really being all that attached to in the first place.

Oh, but the third box. The third box... The third box held the books. Some his, some his parents'. But at the bottom, at the very, very bottom was an old photo album, red in color and held by a silver-trimmed binding.

Stupidly, Riku sat in the desk chair, album placed before him on the desk. And stupidly, he opened it, bombarded by the memories held between the pages, held still within the pictures.

x x x

_"Riku! Riku, come **back**!"_

_"Catch me!"_

_"It's time for lunch!"_

_"No-oo, Momma, catch me, catch me! Come on!"_

x x x

_"Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday, dear Riku, happy..."_

x x x

_"Dad?"_

_"Yeah?"_

_"Do you know any of the names for the stars?"_

_"Only a few. Only the big ones, I guess. Why?"_

_"Do they all have names?"_

_"Well sure they do."_

_"But there are so many of them..."_

_"Well, there are a lot of people, too, but all people have names."_

_"Oh. I never thought of that."_

x x x

They continued. They didn't stop. Not until Riku reached the last page and was left staring at an empty hole, all that remained of his exploding family tree. Yes, just a hole with... a paper stick out of a folder. Huh? In the back of the album was a small folder pouch, no doubt intended for keeping loose picture or papers or what-have-you. And yet the only thing tucked inside was a half-scrap of paper-- white, pink, and blue with a rather cheerful looking stork imprinted in the corner, hat on his head and a tied checkered blanket hanging from its beak. No words, no nothing. The bird and its corner alone had been ripped free from whatever they'd been a part of.

A knock on the door jarred Riku from his moment and he looked up upon hearing his uncle's voice coming muffled through the door.

"You asleep?"

"No. Door's open."

His uncle peered cautiously around the door before nudging it open another foot or two and stepping inside. "Hey there," he said. "...What're you up to? It's late."

"Yeah, sorry. Was the light keeping you up?"

"Nope. Just passing by."

Riku nodded. His uncle nodded. The two stood across from one another with nothing to say. And while Riku had had enough experience with silence in that day alone, he still couldn't help but feel that maybe he owed the man a bit more credit than that. He was, after all, not a psychiatrist. He was just an average middle-aged guy married to a demonic, feministic woman who clearly didn't git a rat's ass about him. In a way, Riku almost felt sorry for the guy.

So, Riku did him the honor of engaging in a conversation with him.

"Did you bring the boxes up this morning?" Riku asked.

"Yep..." The man nodded slowly, a bit awkwardly. He looked towards the photo album in Riku's lap, he looked towards the paper bird held in Riku's hands. For a second, Riku could have sworn he saw something flash across his uncle's face, but it was gone before the boy could catch it, pin it down, and figure out what it was.

_God. Being in a shrink's office really does that to you. Makes you analyze people. Fuck. This is so fucked up._

"Thanks... about the boxes, I mean." Riku nodded rather pointlessly before tapping his thumb against the book opened before him which his uncle seemed to be so shocked to see. "It's a photo album," he explained. "It was just in one of the... yeah. Unpacking. Uh."

"Where'd you get that?" But his uncle's gaze wasn't on the album itself, really, but on the piece of paper in Riku's hands-- the little smiling stork and his bundle of joy.

"I got it from the photo album...? It was in the back."

"Oh."

"It's just one of those baby-bird things. Probably from one of Mom's baby showers."

"...Yeah. ...Yeah, uh. You alright?" _Am I alright? **Huh**? What the heck kind of question is that? We were just talking about baby showers! Wasn't that a happy enough subject? Honestly, people._

"I'm fine," Riku said. Suddenly he wasn't sure if what he was in was as much of a conversation as it was an interrogation gone terribly, terribly awry.

"Do you need anything? I'm on my way downstairs as it is. Now's the time to ask."

"I'm good."

"You sure?"

"Yep." Riku watched his uncle nod all too quickly before practically throwing himself back towards the doorway in his hurry to get out. Riku blinked at the stork in his hand. Blinked at his uncle nearly out the door. And for some reason unbeknownst to him, he found himself blurting out a question he didn't think he'd really had.

"Were they happy? ...When they had me?" he asked. His uncle paused. Turned. Smiled a bit, but not enough to look truly honest. He still looked worried. Still looked scared out of his mind. He still seemed fixated on the bird-- the one stupid cartoon bird.

"Of course they were happy," he replied after a moment.

"Well, I dunno, some people don't want a kid and then bam, they've got one and it's like, 'Well, we were going to get there sooner or later...' Or it's not supposed to happen. Or something."

"It wasn't like that. We were all happy."

"Even Mayako?"

"...Especially Mayako." And then he was gone.

Well that was... exceptionally weird. Riku flipped the stork card over and cocked his head to the side. The front had been free of any trace of writing, but the back still had half of a sentence printed on it in pristine, spiraled cursive.

_"Please join--"_

There was another half-squiggle-- the beginnings of another letter-- but it was cut off by the rip in the paper, where the safety of the stork in his corner ended and a jagged tear began.

Sighing, Riku tucked the scrap back in the pocket it'd come from before closing the album and setting it on his desk once more. He glanced to his cell phone, lying silent and alone beside it. And yet... There was a message. Curiously, Riku picked it up and studied it. 'One New Voice Mail!' it proudly declared.

_But I haven't given anyone this numb--_

_"Hey Riku, it's me. Pick up, man. ...Uh, okay. Listen, I guess you're not there. Um. Naminé and I were just... wondering how you were doing and all. Give me a call back sometime. Or call her. ...At... at least call her, okay? Talk to you soon. Hope everything's going well. Later."_

x x x

_A quiet room, one full of empty boxes and rolls of tape, still unused, still in their packaging. The window had these sunbeams coming through it and if he lied just so on the floor, they'd fall across his body, making one square warm, one square cold. One light, one dark, a funny little pattern on the fabric._

_"Riku, Roxas is here."_

_"I don't want to see him right now."_

_"Riku..."_

_"Just get rid of him already."_

_She was still in the doorway. He was still staring at the sunlight. He could hear her talking but didn't feel like listening..._

_"Please don't be like that. He only wants to--"_

_"Relieve his fucking sexual tension. I don't want to see him. Get rid of him."_

_And one day later when it was no longer day and when no more sunlight fell through the window, he sat on a box and turned his back on the voice, left the phone receiver on his bed with the words streaming though, angry, hurt, and alone._

_"You stubborn son of a bitch, Riku! I just want to talk to you! I can't help you if you don't even let me fucking talk to you!"_

_He stood up, unplugged the phone, and listened to the quiet._

_"We're trying, Riku. How can you expect us to be there for you if you won't even let us anywhere near you? We're trying to help, really." _

_'You should've tried harder.'_

_"Riku, you're locking us out..." _

_'You should have said blocking, not locking. Right? Blocking implies shoving you away for the first time. Locking would imply having shoved you away, out-- having shut the door, and instilling a lock. All I did was shove. All I did was block and shove, I never closed the door. I never closed the goddamn door. You closed it behind yourselves.'_

x x x

Sora came around much later that evening. He threw a pebble up to Riku's window and when Riku appeared, the look he found in Sora's eyes was almost frightened, almost guilty. Almost as though he hadn't expected the pebble to leave his hand as it had, to arc through the air and hit the glass just so. Almost as though he hadn't expected for Riku to truly make his appearance like that, like he did framed in the window like that, in the open window like that.

Sora didn't know what to say. He didn't know why he'd come, really. But he had a vague something, a vague pulling something that had pulled him there and that then pulled the words from him like air. "Can I come in?"

Silently, Riku disappeared and reappeared a minute later by the front door. Silently, the two boys ascended the stairs, rounded the hall to the guest room, and closed the door behind them. It was all still silent and the two of them bumbled around awkwardly-- one starting a sentence, then closing his mouth as he saw the other move, waiting for words that were too slow in coming.

"I'm sorry... about the dinner thing," Riku finally said.

"It's okay."

"I didn't stand you up."

"I didn't think you did."

"I had to go out."

"I know." Sora smiled pleasantly, catching sight of Riku's distant look. He reached over and rested his hand on the boy's arm, his thumb moving on its own accord in some small, circular motion that might have been soothing. Or distracting. Either way, it worked. "Hey, it's okay, really," Sora said. "We've got all summer."

Riku laughed at himself, shook his head once, twice. Still haunted by the all-too-familiar voice that had now made its way into his phone, for God's sake. "It's stupid," he muttered. He didn't know which was more stupid, though. How upset he was over his missed date with Sora or how upset he was that nothing-- virtually nothing was going alright in his supposedly new life. ...Mostly because he just couldn't escape the old one no matter how hard he tried.

"Your room... is..."

_Not my room._

"Empty."

"Yeah..."

"Those boxes your stuff?"

"Yeah."

"Don't you have any posters?"

"I don't think so."

"Pictures?"

"Not really."

"Heeere we go." Hopping up from the bed, Sora immediately spied the open box full of desk supplies. He eagerly whipped out a stack of papers, a fistful of markers, crayons, pencils-- grinned like nothing else as he said, "We'll make some!"

"Some what?"

"_Post-ers_."

"Posters."

"Riku-Sora posters!"

"_What_?"

"Riku and Sora posters for your room." He had already plopped down on the floor, kneeling beside the desk and doodling away. From the side, he took on this incredibly childish form, it seemed. Head bent in concentration, tip of the tongue just barely visible between his two pursed lips. It was almost-- almost enough to make Riku burst out laughing. Especially when Sora turned just moments later and held up his finished piece. "Okay, well here's a Kairi one. We can have her, too. I'm just warming up."

The little stick girl looked at Riku. Surely in her paper world, she was contemplating stick suicide. ...She was that ugly.

"It's a wonder you made it out of elementary school art," Riku mumbled.

"I didn't. I failed."

"...How do you fail that? All you do is make pinch-pots."

"And have clay snowball fights."

"I see."

Another piece of paper before him, Sora was scribbling madly away, churning out two stick folks this time-- "Here's you, see? Annnd..." A scribble here, a dash of brown crayon there... "Here's me!"

The little skinny Sora person and the slightly taller Riku person both regarded the real, live Riku with happy, stupid little stares. They had no noses. Riku actually did laugh, this time. Mostly because it almost looked like they were holding hands, up until the point Riku realized that they didn't have hands either.

"Beautiful."

"Isn't it though? We'll put this one riiight..." Sora strode over to the closet door and jabbed his finger right up against the door. "Here." Tape became his primary weapon and up went Riku, Sora, and Kairi, tacked onto the closet and watching over the two boys in the slightly warmer, slightly less empty bedroom.

Riku couldn't remember the last time he'd done anything even remotely similar to what he did that evening with Sora. The two of them sat opposite of one another in the guest room, armed with their paper and their crayons alike. Sora never complained about Riku's art skills (while, though nothing special, were vastly superior to his own) and Riku never doubted Sora's innocent little intentions in his doodles and his pink hearts and green stars and miscolored rainbows scrawled out across the white.

In all of one hour, they had the entire closet door covered from top to bottom with drawing after drawing, laid out like a storyboard that slowly began to spread to the wall.

"Hey, you know, I think your room looks much better already."

"More like a room, at any rate."

"We'll make it livable."

"Livable, huh?"

"Yep. You and me. We can fix it up, m'kay? It'll be gorgeous. You'll love it by the time we're done. And Kairi can get you new curtains. ...Because those ones are really, _really_ ugly. Man, what was May_ thinking_, huh?" Sora laughed lightly, but stopped when he realized he was the only one. If Riku wouldn't even laugh at the expense of Mayako... Something **had** to be wrong. There was no doubt about it then. "...Riku?"

"Sorry."

"...You're not okay, are you? Did they give you more pills or something?"

"No... no, it's not that."

Beside Riku on the bed, Sora tucked his knees up to his chin, rested there and looked at Riku long and steady. Quiet for a minute, still quiet even while he said it-- "I can listen... if you wanna talk about it, I mean. Sometimes it feels good. Sometimes it doesn't, I guess. Um... it all just... depends on the mood you're in. If you want to talk about it or not... you know?"

x x x

_"So... who named the stars if all of them have names?"_

_"...Someone very, very old."_

_"Hey! I'm serious! Who names all of them? Or... who keeps track of them? I mean, they all look the same, right?"_

_"Well, it's all in the way you look at it, Riku. Do they really all look the same to you?"_

_"Well... duh. I mean, I can't imagine being up in space with all of them. It'd be the same thing everywhere you looked. You'd get lost and turned around and probably go crazy or something from all the confusion. You'd just get... lost, you know?"_

_"Not if you know which stars are what."_

_"Dad?"_

_"Yeah?"_

_"You're avoiding the question. Who named all the stars?"_

_"I have no idea."_

x x x

"My dad was twenty-nine when I was born and my mom was twenty-five. I never knew how they met or why they fell in love until I was in fifth grade and thought myself smart enough to ask. They'd been gathering some seashells along the beach. She was a tourist and he'd rented an apartment there with a friend for a few months-- for a business deal they were making down there. They both saw the same shell from a distance. It was white, stained purple around the edges and black on the inside. And they both tried to get it, but almost hit each other in the process of bending down to pick it up.

"It was kind of like that. A year and a half later they were married and the year after that I was born. We didn't have a huge house, we didn't have tiny house. My dad worked at the same business he'd come to the island for years ago, but he'd become the only owner of it, so he made a fair amount of money. Every night he would come in my room and ask me for one thing I wanted right then. When I was a kid, a little kid, it was easy. 'I want you to read to me,' 'I want a glass of milk, a song, a joke--' and whatever it was, he always gave it to me. I wasn't spoiled or anything... I don't think so. I didn't always get what I wanted for holidays or presents or anything like that, but whatever I asked for every night, before I fell asleep, I always got.

"When I was sick, Mom would take me out back and put me on the hammock. She didn't think that staying in the house would make me feel better-- she always wanted me to have fresh air and was always making me go outside, even when I didn't want to. She wouldn't leave me alone and I would lie there like a moron and she'd just stroke my hair and sometimes she'd hum, but she'd never sing because she told me she was tone-deaf and couldn't carry a tune worth anything. I never believed her, but I never asked her to, either.

"My dad always used to swing me around and he told me I'd be a blitzball star-- told me when he swung me upside down by my legs and all I could see was his upside-down face and even that was blurry because my head was full of blood and dizzy. And I played all the games and I won all the time and he laughed more and smiled more with every win and I thought that if that was all I had to do to make him happy, I could do it. Because winning was easy and I thought that if I could live every day making my dad happy, I could somehow break even for all the things he'd given me-- one thing every night for every day of my life.

"I guess we all got on really well. Even at the end, you know... I told my dad about the first time I had sex. I don't know why, really. I was mad at him about something. Something stupid, because I can't even remember what it was now. Even though we got on real well, it doesn't mean we never fought. I told him I'd slept with my best friend, a guy. He was quiet, but he wasn't angry. Just a little disappointed, I could tell. Not anything serious. But the first thing he said after that was 'That's okay.' And he never brought it up again. Just 'That's okay.' Like it really was.

"If I had known what would happen, I would've made her sing for me. I would have won more games and I would've played harder, tried harder, just to make sure Dad never stopped laughing and smiling and cheering like every win was his win and every game was his game. He didn't live through me, he just wanted the best for me. He wasn't controlling and manipulative, she wasn't critical or disapproving. I think they understood, more than anything. More than their love for me, they had an understanding that went deeper than that... If that makes any sense. ...I guess it doesn't. Sorry."

Riku wasn't sure how long Sora had been crying by the time he stopped talking. In all honesty, he didn't even notice the boy's tears until he closed his mouth and actually brought himself to look up and over at the person he'd been talking at for the past hour. It was 12:31 and Riku didn't know what to say anymore. Sora just sat there and cried, stared openly and Riku and cried. He stood from the bed, walked over to the boy, stood beside him, and cried. For lack of a better plan, a better thing to do, Riku leaned against his hip and closed his eyes, feeling the shuddering and the pain beneath the skin beneath the clothes. He felt Sora's cool hands press against the side of his face, the side facing away from him, and he continued to feel Sora cry.

And just as Riku wasn't sure how long Sora had been crying before, he wasn't sure how long they remained like that after. But Sora still cried and Riku still didn't understand what had originally set it off or when it had all originally begun. Had Sora come to the house expecting to hear Riku pour out his life's story? It was by no means an interesting or fascinating one, not particularly heart-wrenching in any way, really. The only truly maddening thing about any of it was how normal they'd all been, how safe and secure inside their bubble of normalcy they'd all existed. He'd had two parents who loved each other dearly, who loved their only child dearly, and who were then ripped none-too-neatly from the world in which they'd quietly and invisibly lived in for forty some-odd years.

None of it made any sense. And none of it could add up to all the tears Sora shed, all the things he cried over for which Riku had no more energy left to cry over himself.

Riku could have gone on. He could have chosen not to stop where he did, to bring in the 'friends' he thought he'd had, the games he could have won, the things he'd lost that weren't his parents, the paths he'd taken that weren't his own. But to do so seemed like it would only make Sora cry until he was out of water completely, until he passed out from the sheer effort of producing enough tears to do the job. So Riku fell silent and after a while, Sora left without another word.

It occurred to Riku before Sora left that he should have said something. That perhaps he should've tried to convey some sort of emotion through some sort of words in some way of trying to pull himself closer to this person who had suddenly become so sweet and so bright within his little shell of a life. To say "I love you" would have been stupid, Riku knew, for not only did he doubt that he loved Sora at that moment, but he also doubted the possibility that anyone could develop love for any person within such a short time. "I care about you." "Please don't disappear." "Don't die." "Don't leave me." "I trust you, believe in you, I desire you in no way a person should ever desire another person."

Because it was true. Because Riku did.

Because he had developed that desire, that longing, from the moment Sora pressed his hand against the side of Riku's face, from the moment Riku could feel Sora's pain and suffering passing through him in shivers and gasps and quiet little sobs shed on Riku's behalf. Because what Riku wanted was for someone to cry for him, to cry real tears for him and to die on the inside for him, over and over and over again. It was wicked selfishness in its purest form and Riku embraced it whole-heartedly.

After Sora had gone, Riku sat on the bed that wasn't his, looking across the room that wasn't his, at a desk that wasn't his. He stood, moved forward, and picked up the bottle of perfume that sat there in wait, patient and quiet as the hands that had once held it, as the hands that had once held his, at the hands that had once taught him to be patient and quiet, too. He could breathe her in, he could feel her-- but for the life of him, he could not bring himself to remember more.

Riku spent the next few days acheiving the one solid goal of passing time. Each and every hour was spent with one eye fixed to the clock, waiting for the o' clock hour when he could roll himself up the stairs with little or no suspicion from his aunt and uncle. All he wanted to do was pass through one day so he could get to the next, just to go through the same routine over again. In all actuallity, it felt like he was stuck in the loop of a terribly dull play that just never seemed to have an ending of any sort in sight.

Probably the strangest thing that Riku failed to realize was the sudden absence of his perky little red-headed neighbor. It took him five days before it dawned on him that she hadn't made a single appearance since their walk some afternoon ago, and this fact was more of a concern for him than anything else he had going at that point. It seemed Kairi had the ability to erase herself from someone's life with the exact same ease with which she had sketched herself in in the first place.

He saw her once, the day following his realization, between the fence planking that separated their two houses. She was sunning out back by her pool, a tiny swimsuit barely covering her and a delicate little pair of rose colored sunglasses perched on the tip of her pert nose. On anyone else they might have looked tacky-- ridiculous, even. But on Kairi they fit somehow.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey." She spoke like she'd been expecting him.

"How've you been?"

Kairi looked up then, her expression blank. But she had to give him credit for trying and so she offered a smile that seemed weak and fractured somehow. "Alright," she said. "I've been alright."

"That's good... Did Sora... talk to you?"

"I haven't heard from him in a few days, no."

"Oh."

"It happens sometimes." She reached over beside her, fingers clasped around a bottle of water, sweating in the heat. "He goes quiet for a while. We all do. It's the heat, maybe. Summer gets so dull after a while and it all gets so hot."

Letting this sit for a moment, it occurred to Riku that Kairi's silence might stem from the fact that they simply had nothing to say to each other. Really, she had acted as his support early on, a sort of bridge to the rest of the world. The rest of the world... which just happened to be Sora. It would hardly matter now if she faded out of the picture completely, dimmed to a white background of dead summer and its perfect white heat.

"Don't take it too hard, Riku," she said softly. "Sometimes things are hard to put into words, okay? Try to understand...?"

"I understand."

"It's hard..."

"I know it is."

"What've you been up to?"

"Not much."

x x x

Later that day, Riku thumbed through the photo album once more. His history replayed itself before his eyes, some flick he'd seen one too many times for it to still have its initial pull and power.

When he got to end, however, he noticed something was wrong.

The little paper stork was gone.

(x) (x) (x)

Bam. Four chapters in and I think I almost have the plot all set up and ready to roll. ...Whee, whee, glee, glee? I know this chapter was even larger than the last one. Ignore it! It's only because I won't be updating for a while due to... you know. Summer complications. Prior commitments. ...But if you head on over to that LJ of mine and friend it up, you might get a heads up as to updates or activities or. ...Um. Yeah. Okay. Whatever. Bed now. Review please! Love! Bubbles! Rainbows! Puke!


	5. Explode

Special thanks goes to **archy the cockroach** for her fabulous uploading skills while my computer is regurgitating everything XD Thank you!

(x) (x) (x)

**Suburbia**

'Explode'

Saturday afternoon was like a wild bitch-slap to the face and it occurred to Riku that the following school year may very well be a hell of long nights and boring weekends spent completely and utterly alone. With no prospects of doing any for that evening, he'd woken that morning and set himself the one, silly little goal of finding the bird that had gone missing from his photo album. In all honesty, he really didn't have much of a connection with the stupid thing, but he figured it was rightfully his and therefore rightfully meant to be kept with all the things that were once rightfully his parents'.

Thinking this, Riku nodded. _Yeah_. That was right. And he surveyed the room around him and the boxes half-open and the dangling stick-figures on the closet door and his mother's perfume and pumps and skirts and suddenly-- right there in the rumpled bed of Mayako's guest room-- he realized that this was all still very, very surreal. It was surreal when he brushed his teeth and the mint tasted like fish paste. Surreal when he walked downstairs and opened his mouth to speak to a persistent little neighbor-girl who wasn't there. Surreal, yes, when he was upstairs, skulking around the door to his aunt and uncle's bedroom. His uncle was rummaging through his wardrobe, wearing a decent pair of slacks and a nice undershirt. Golfing, he'd said earlier. He was going golfing.

That was the sport of kings, wasn't it? _Hey, if this guy's a king, I wonder if that would make me a duke or something. A lord. Lord Riku. Lord Riku the Wise. Lord Riku the Irreversibly Fucked Up... This is an intriguing concept. I should keep going with this._

But at that moment, the uncle looked up, caught sight of the kid in his doorway and smiled-- one big, easygoing gesture that Riku figured was supposed to loosen him up or something. Open him _up_ or something. "Hey, Riku," he said. "Made any plans for today?"

"No..." Green polo shirt clutched in one triumphant hand, Riku's uncle turned to face him-- suddenly thoughtful, suddenly a bit more wary. On some level, Riku had a feeling he knew what was coming. Shifting his weight from one foot to the other, Riku opened his mouth, let it hang there stupidly for a moment, before tossing out the words-- "Hey, that bird. You know, the paper one?"

He looked up to see what reaction that had gotten. What kind of shocked and startled expression it had spurred into being.

What he got was a rather amusing image of his uncle getting his head stuck in his polo. Riku snorted-- a noise which he promptly attempted to disguise as a cough when his uncle's head successfully popped through the proper hole and he turned back to face Riku, laughing along as though they were the best of friends.

_Hell no, you bird-stealer. I know you did it._

"Sorry Riku, what was that?"

"The stork I showed you a couple nights ago," Riku said, hands finding their ways into his pockets. Baggy black cargos and sleeveless hoodie combined, he was the picture-perfect Saturday morning summerteen. It was a little sickening to think about really... Clearing his throat when his uncle turned towards the mirror, Riku took another step into the room, trying to catch a glimpse of his face. "The one you saw. ...It was in the photo album? You know where it went?"

"It's missing?" his uncle asked. Innocent as ever, pulling at the polo and tucking it into his neatly pressed kakis.

"Yeah."

There was a pause. And **bam**, RIku had it. That fleeting look of guilt and that tiny little flash-in-the-facial-pan of sorrow. He could only smirked as his uncle moved past him, heading back through the bedroom door with a waved had and an over-the-shoulder kind of comment. _An over-the-shoulder kind of **lie**, is more fucking like it._

"Well, I haven't seen it around, but I'll keep my eyes peeled for it, m'kay?"

"Right."

x x x

"Hey!"

Riku was in the coffee shop when he heard it. Sora had swung by at around noon and breathlessly asked him if he was up for hanging out after work. _"Meet me at the coffee house-- few doors down from Cid's-- I'll head there after work and I wanna see you there, okay? If you're not there, I'll never forgive you!"_

So, with a threat like that, of course Riku was there. He'd gotten there half an hour early, actually, seeing as he'd left well before Sora's scheduled 6:30 release in fear of getting turn about in the neighborhood somehow. ...Again. ...Well, at least he had pants on him this time. Once at the designated spot, he'd grabbed a strawberry smoothie-- though he would never figure out why a coffee shop _made_ smoothies-- and settled into one of the many oversized leather sofas speckling the place, more than prepared to wait out the time until Sora was bound to come traipsing happily through the door.

But back with the voice. That was the real oddball thing about it all. Because Riku most certainly didn't expect to be confronted by anyone except Sora. And Riku most certainly, _certainly_ didn't expect to be confr--

"Hey, I know _you_!" It was, shock of all shocks, a girl talking to Riku. And probably even more shocking than this was the fact that it wasn't Kairi. Instantly, Riku was on guard. He didn't exactly know any other girls aside from Kairi. Part of his brain pointed out that that was rather pathetic. And another part of his brain pointed out that his aunt was, indeed, a girl.

...But Mayako didn't count. He wasn't even that sure if Mayako was really a girl. She was just... _Mayako_.

_But wait, she said she knew me. That's not right. How the fuck could she--?_

"...You do?" he asked. His face just screamed brilliance. Not. He tried to shut up his head, but it wouldn't listen. So instead, he poured every little ounce of his being into focusing on the girl who was randomly speaking to him.

The girl in question was in front of him then, not particularly tall, but from Riku's sitting position, he still had to crane his neck at a bit of an odd angle in order to catch a good glimpse of her face. A pretty face it was, framed by a head of hair that reminded Riku an awful lot of chocolate-covered gummy bears. Really, for the hair to remind him of chocolate-covered gummy bears was alright, seeing as the girl's hair was brown. But her eyes were green and Riku had never exactly had green chocolate before. He had a feeling it would severely dampened the entire chocolate experience.

But after a blink and another brief study, he decided that yes, this girl was definitely like a chocolate-covered gummy bear-- eyes included-- because she was so... fruity. Not the unbearable fruitiness that the pop media used to portray all flamboyantly gay men-- hell no-- but that sweet tang of fruit chew and chocolate wrapped into one delightfully yummy candy form. The girl smiled. Riku felt exceptionally mushy all of a sudden and wasn't entirely sure why. He just felt the sudden urge to grope something and was a bit put-out that Sora wasn't around.

The realization made him want to beat himself very, very painfully until he was through and done being a completely wimpy moron.

"Yeah, you must be Riku, right?" she asked. Her voice had softened since she first spoke to him and a sweet kind of nervousness made her blush a little, smile a little more, say, "Sorry to scare you like that-- I'm Olette! I, um, I know Kairi, you know? She's told me about you. She said I should say 'hi' to you if I saw you around town, and, well, here you are!"

"Sure enough... Here I am..." Riku was about to give the girl a smile, just to show what a nice guy he could be, but then he realized that his smiles still weren't quite up to par with everyone else's, so he kept his mouth screwed into some half-assed loopy line and just settled for-- "Nice to meet you?"

Clearly, this didn't really deter Olette in the slightest, for she promptly turned to one side, picking someone out of the crowd with those chocolate-covered-gummy eyes of hers and flagging him down. As she did so, she called out something. A certain something that it took Riku a moment to register.

"Hayner, over here!"

And a certain something that it took Riku another moment to really, _really_ register. And then it hit him dead on and there was no denying it.

_**Hayner**?_

"Yo, what's up?"

"Hayner, this is Riku-- Kairi's friend!"

"Ohhh. Uh. Hey." Quite unlike Olette, Hayner gave off absolutely no gummy vibe in the slightest. If anything, his tone was a wary, cautious one. Not quiet in any sense of the word, but challenging. Almost as though Hayner were about ready to punch Riku square in the jaw if he even so much as showed the slightest sign of stepping out of line.

And was that a glare Riku saw? ...Yes. Yes, it decidedly was. Well. O-kay. All shapes and sizes of people in this neck of the woods. For lack of a better, more original thing to say, Riku decided to play it simple with Hayner.

"Hi," he said. Yep. Real simple. Real clean. Straightforward and gusty, but not enough to land him in a fist fight with the guy.

Perfectly oblivious to the grit, crackle and spark of testosterone in the air, Olette giggle delightedly and took a drink which Hayner offered her-- something that looked like a coffee version of Riku's smoothie, topped with whipped cream and drizzled caramel. Frappuccino? Was that what it was called? Riku sure as hell didn't know. Frappuccino and cappuccino were two words that sounded too similar and it was all too goddamn confusing. _They should have just settled for calling it a coffee smoothie._

Regardless of what it was called, Olette's coffee smoothie was waved about in the air with the motion of her hand as she flicked one finger out towards an empty table, looked at Riku, smiled that smile, and asked him, "You wanna come sit with us, Riku? We're waiting for Pence over there!"

"Uh, I'm waiting for someone, too, actually."

"Well let's wait together! Kairi told me you were totally awesome, but she said you also weren't very talkative. Still, it was pretty easy to pick you out of a crowd, you know what I mean? Your hair's so _different_! It's gorgeous!"

Hayner seemed to bristle at this comment, his eyes flicking to Riku's perfectly styled hair and narrowing. Riku got the distinct impression that Hayner was mentally hacking his hair to bits. If he wasn't so sure of his own badass nature, he might have been intimidated. As it was, the other boy was just getting on his nerves.

"Uh. Thanks."

"No charge!" Olette was still smiling-- even when she swung a tiny little hip into Hayner's side, earning a yelp and a glare from the boy. She laughed a little, covering her mouth prettily with one hand and saying to Riku, "But I have to apologize for my _loser_ boyfriend here. He has no social skills!"

"Wh--HEY! That's so not true!" Hayner snapped. Inside his own head, Riku was wondering what on earth Sora had ever seen in this punk. _God, what a pain._

"Anyway, Riku, do you know anyone else around town? I'd be more than happy to introduce you to the gang, if you want!" Smile, smile. Olette and her gummy-eyes. Smi-ile.

"Um..."

"Say, if you're one of Kairi's good friends--" The girl tapped one finger on her chin thoughtfully, taking a small little sip of her... _coffe-smoothie_... before nodding once and looking to Riku again, continuing with "--you probably know Sora, right?"

"...Uh." _Don't look at Hayner. Don't look at Hayner. You fuck up every lie you make. So don't even lie. Keep it simple. Don't look at Hayner. You might punch him. _ Riku's glance shifted away from Olette towards Hay-- _FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NOT HAYNER_-- towards the floor. "Y-yeah, I kind of know him."

"I never get to see him anymore... He's always busy. I try and swing by the bookstore sometimes, but he's always too busy to talk, too busy to go to lunch or anything." Riku studied his shoes and continued listening to Olette talk. It wasn't so bad. It was probably better than sitting on Hayner and beating his face it, really. "It really makes it difficult," Olette was saying. "We never get to do anything as one big group anymore. He's always missing. And I worry about him..."

If Riku was stupid, he would've missed the way her voice caught just _so_, the way she caught _herself_ and shut herself up. Riku looked back towards her then and saw the exact same expression he'd seen on his uncle earlier that day. That look-- being smack dab in the act of doing something wrong. The guilt. But then it was gone as soon as it'd shown. Olette was smiling once more, the act a bit more somber, but still so originally hers.

"You should drag him along with you the next time we all get together, okay?"

"Um, I'll... try."

The silence that followed was broken by Hayner, and if Riku hadn't set his mind to disliking the kid who so obviously disliked him already, he probably would've been grateful towards him.

"If Pence doesn't show soon, I'm outta here," Hayner muttered.

Whether Olette either heard or cared, no one really knew. Because at that particular moment, a certain Sora strolled right on in and three pairs of eyes hone in on him right at that very, very particular moment.

Not surprisingly, Olette was the first one to smile, the first one be warm about it, to say, "Oh! There's Sora! _Sora_! Over here!"

And-- though this was considerably more surprising than Olette being kind-- neither Hayner nor Olette seemed particularly shocked when Sora... turned around and walked right back out of the coffee shop. Riku blinked. He scrambled for the words, suddenly felt as though _he_ was the one responsible for fixing it, for figuring out, for excusing the both of them.

"Uh, I gotta go, we have somewhere we have to be."

"You guys can't hang for a minute?"

"No." Riku tried to look apologetic, but it was a difficult thing to do-- looking apologetic while trying to smother the 'What the fuck?' expression currently residing on his face. "Sorry, we're late. Some other time?"

"Okay, Riku. Don't worry about it. It was nice meeting you!"

"You too, Olette. And Hayner."

"Yeah. Later."

Jogging across the parking lot was a painful experience Riku never wanted to experience again. The heat that swelled up from that thing was unbearable and the mad sunlight glinting off every single car roof was unforgivable. _Unbearable, unforgivable... This hardly seems like the most fucking livable place to ever exist. _

"Sora! Sora, wait up!" He grappled with Sora's shoulder for a moment, but the thing suddenly felt so scrawny and bony that Riku half expected his hand to come away with some mangled limb in tow. Needless to say, he dropped his arm and simply leapt the extra leap that put him in hurried step beside Sora. "I'm _sorry_, I didn't know."

Sora blinked. Looked up-- dazed and confused, like what Riku had said was either in another language or had been about random as someone pointing out that bonobo chimpanzees engage in oral sex.

...Yes, almost as random at that, but not quite.

Yet after a moment and another blink, Sora drew the two of them to a slower pace and asked, "...Know what?"

_O-kay. Sure, Sora. We'll pretend you didn't just bitch out and run as soon as you saw those kids. Why the fuck not? Jesus_. It was all Riku could do _not_ to roll his eyes, _not_ to snap and jerk and pull at Sora because he didn't know what the hell his problem was and because he wanted to hel-- ...That was probably the worst part. The wanting to _help_ part. Riku didn't like helping people very much.

"I didn't... know... that... sitting with other people would upset you?" he tried. _Lame_.

"...That's not what-- I'm _not_ upset," Sora huffed. Tan arms came up and his own fingers buried within his messy hair. His elbows stuck up at some awkward angles and it took Riku a moment to realize that an awful lot about Sora was just awkward. He couldn't tell if it was an endearing quality or what-- but he didn't really care.

What he cared about was that Sora was clearly upset and had just said he wasn't. _Am I corrupting the kid or is this just an off day?_

"I thought you didn't lie," Riku muttered after a painstakingly long lull in the conversation.

"I-- Riku, I'm _fine_, sorry. I just got a little weird." The kid was possibly bipolar, he was suddenly grinning like such a manic. "I'm not upset. Just weird, is all."

"Just... weird?"

"Weirded out. You know. Spooked?" One shoulder lifted lightly, making the position of his elbows in the air all the stranger.

"Oh. Spooked. ...By?"

"It's not important. Forget about it." Where the two had been standing at a the intersection was suddenly full of stopped cars and dead traffic. It was in the moment that the red hand turned to the glowing 'WALK!' man that Sora and Riku paraded across the street and somehow abandoned the better part of their awkwardness and confusion across the way they'd just come.

Sora's elbows hung at a better angle, his shoulders looked firmer, his smile a little less insistent and buzzing with a doubt. "You look like you're feeling better today!" he told Riku, happily slinging an arm around the taller boy's shoulders.

"A little more awake, I guess. At least I've been getting sleep, right?"

"Sleeping is the best fad to ever exist." _Fad? The fad of sleep. Brilliant idea, Sora. All us lazy kids can be hipsters._ "Oh hey, I got you a present!"

...Well _that_ snapped Riku out of it. His head jerked towards Sora, who was burying his free hand into the front pocket of his shirt. Really, with a kangaroo pocket like that, the shirt should have had a hood. Hoodless and sleeveless was what it was. Weird. A weird, weird shirt. But weird shirt or no, Sora had a thin paperback out a moment later, clearly from the used bookstore he worked at, judging by the dog-eared pages and slightly worn spine.

"A... huh?"

"Ta da!"

It was in Sora's hands, then Riku's, passed with an ease and turned to the front cover. An acrylic painting in blue and yellow stood out against the black background, though it was so abstract Riku couldn't quite tell what the painting was actually of. But he could damn well read and picked out the title in bold orange print.

**'POMES ALL SIZES.'**

...He could only pray that typo was on purpose. And he couldn't really tell if it was endearingly weird (like Sora) or just plain weird-weird. Either way. Riku felt compelled to state the obvious.

"...It's a poetry book."

"Not just _any_ poetry book. It's a Jack _Kerouac_ poetry book. I marked my favorite ones," Sora added helpfully. "You should check those ones out first."

"It's awesome." And for a moment, Riku forgot his lesser skills and let a smile slip. "Thanks," he said. And shockingly enough, he really meant it.

Sora swung his head to the side, gave Riku a grin and tugged him down and closer with the arm still draped about his shoulders. Riku half expected the kid to ruffle his hair-- which would have been terribly annoying and mood-shattering-- but Sora did no such thing. He just conked his head against Riku's shoulder, laughed lightly and tugged once more, batted at Riku's arm, roughed around. Riku rolled his eyes and made to give Sora a playful shove, but nearly sent him sprawling smack dab into the lane of oncoming traffic. And so their play-fight began and ended, Sora declaring himself the victor and Riku muttering a rather noncommittal and non-bitter, "Whatever."

The two turned a street corner, the sidewalk now sheltered by the sun from overhanging trees and towering privacy hedges. Riku felt the weight of the small book in his hand, the weight of Sora's arm which had snaked around his own-- he was pleasantly weighted down to the ground, no more medicinal highs or fogged-up psychedelic planes. No need for a catastrophic episode of blue rain pandas there. Just Riku, just Sora, and just the book between them.

The book and the words Sora said with a little, thoughtful smile. "So anyway, it's a little breezy outside today. Much better than it has been lately, huh? ...Wanna go fly kites?"

"...Kites?"

"Yeah! Don't tell me you're one of those losers who thinks they're too old for it! Heehee, I can tell your inner child is just _dying_ for the chance to go fly kites with me, widdle biddle Wi-kuuu!" It should really have come as no surprise to Riku when he found himself in some sort of twisted half-nelson that didn't quite make the cut of one, seeing as Sora was far too short and a bit too weak to really drag Riku's built form down and pin him under an arm or two. ...So really, Sora was just sort of dangling off his neck. Awkwardly. And a bit uncomfortably, Riku had to admit.

"Ugh, get off!"

"But you kno-ow you want to, ri-ight?"

"Want to bash your _skull_ in!"

"Why you'd never! Don't be silly, Riku!"

"Just _watch_ me, for god's sake. Get off my head!"

"Aww, don't cah-whyyy, bay-bee---yaaah! RIKU!" And really, Sora shouldn't have been all that surprised when he ended up slung over Riku's shoulder like a sack of cotton, swung around in a dizzying loop as Riku made a lazy show of spin, spin, spinning on the sidewalk corner.

"You say something, Sora?"

"P-Put me down!"

"I thought we were gonna go fly kites?"

"I'm not a kite!"

"Really now? I couldn't tell."

Letting out quite the beastly little snarl-- "Rawr!"-- and taking to pounding on Riku's back stubbornly with his fists, Sora soon had the older nearly collapsing in a laughing fit, nearly toppling over on his ass in the process.

No. Not nearly. But quite _really_ toppling over on his ass in the process, and dragging Sora right along with him. Thankfully there was a rather nice and cushiony flower bed right there to break their tragic fall.

"Gotcha, Ri-ku." Ah, and there was Sora, looking every ounce triumphant and poised on Riku's chest, arms crossed and victorious. "Now are we gonna go fly kites or what?"

"...These flowers are awfully comfortable."

"They're gonna kill us if they catch us, Riku. ...Hm. ...Actually. I think they're outta town anyway."

"My point exactly."

Sora laughed, flopped down on to Riku's chest and seemed perfectly content to just nuzzle against the warmth of skin and fabric alike. And as long as Riku could breathe, he had absolutely no problem with that arrangement whatsoever.

So that was how they stayed, the better part of twenty minutes in a peaceful silence and relaxed warmth. Riku felt himself drifting somewhere towards sleep, right before he felt a rumble against his chest and realized that it was Sora speaking. ...A weird experience, to feel sound, but not exactly an unpleasant one, either.

"Mm... Hey, Riku?"

"Yeah?"

"You don't like Hayner and Olette better than me 'n Kairi, do you?" Sora's fingers were on him now, trailing nervous lines and patterns down and across his chest. It wasn't necessarily any kind of sexual thing. It was just Sora. Just Sora and just Sora being nervous. Sora saying, "I know it sounds stupid to ask... but I should've let you hang out with them instead if you'd really wanted t--"

"_No_," Riku insisted. "_Really_. I'd much rather be here squashing some stranger's flowers with _you_ than out at coffee with _them_. Any day."

Sora seemed to think about this for a moment before laughing and nodding and smiling like a fool. "Good!" he chirped. "But... Kairi told you about Hayner... didn't she?"

"She... didn't really tell me much. J-Just that I shouldn't hang around him."

"That's stupid. You can hang with Hayner if you want to."

"I _don't_ want to, Sora. Geeze, what's it going to take to convince you that I like hanging out with _you_, Stupid?"

"A kiss." Sora grinned. "On my chinny-chin-chin."

"You're such a fruit." And still, Riku could only comply. _ Smooch._ Right on the chin. Sora let out something that sounded suspiciously like a giggle, followed by a content sort of "Mmm..." sound and a happy hum.

"'Angel mine, be you fine, angel divine!'" Sora crooned the words like a ballad and he grinned like he'd just said the most clever, most endearing little thing the world had to offer. In actuality, it was just quoted poetry, but as far as Riku was concerned, he may just as _well_ have the most endearing little thing the world had to offer. Nothing at that moment could possibly have been cuter than Sora sprawled across his chest with flowers in his hair and a goofy little smile written in pink ink across his mouth.

So, in a way, Riku really did feel like shooting himself when he heard the words barreling out of his mouth and take a clumsy and staggered swipe at what little peace he'd built up for himself. "Why on _Earth_ do you spend time with me?" he heard himself asking. _Fucking vocal cords. Never fucking listen._

"Honestly?" With a bit of a squirm and a crack of a joint somewhere, Sora propped his elbows up on Riku's chest-- something that should've been uncomfortable, but wasn't really so bad. His head rested on his hands, his fingertips drummed against his cheeks, and thought was his only concern-- thinking his only means of getting anywhere and figuring out how he came to be there. And thinking got him this:

"Well, for starters, you're really hot." Smile. Grin. Chuckle. "But _really_, really? You're _real_. You feel a lot and... that's nice. And you're not afraid of me."

"...Don't mean to be the bearer of bad news, Sora, but you're really not that scary."

"I'm not, am I?" It was almost a pleasant temperature outside in the shade, Riku noted. Sora's head was silhouetted up against the trees and the sunlight passing through-- exactly the opposite of how it'd all been when Riku had first met him. Sora blinded by the sun, now turned away from it, sheltered and saying, "It's a big dumb tragedy, all the stupid shit that happens around here."

"I imagine."

"You're lucky. Living on an island must have been great. If you ever got too sick of things, you could just go to the ocean and look at it for however long you wanted because it was always right there and always open and wide and... stuff."

"That's true... there's no water here."

"There's no _nothing_ here." _Double negative. _ Riku thought to point it out. Then he thought again and just didn't.

"There must be _something_," Riku said, more for his benefit than Sora's. If he could make it through another month believing that there was something there worth staying for, perhaps that would be enough time bought in which he actually could _find_ something worth staying for. A complex process, to be sure, but one that was bound to get the job of satisfaction and contentment over and done with. Riku wanted to be okay. Really. He did.

"There's a lake." Sora had spoken it as an afterthought. A bit of a reluctant afterthought. Riku picked up on it, yeah, but it wasn't enough to rule out the punch of the overall statement-- _a lake. There's fucking **water** here._

"Really?"

"I could show you, if you want. But I don't think you'll like it."

"Why wouldn't I?" _A lake is really just a small kind of ocean... right? And as much as I fucking hated the ocean when I was there, if that place was my life on Earth as _was_, this place is my life in hell as _is_. I'd _kill_ for ocean. Even just a piece of it_. Riku was trying to sit up then, Sora sliding back, Sora looking away when he said it-- "Come on, I wanna see it."

"Okay." Simple as that.

Sora detached himself from Riku, rolling onto the flowers, the grass, the dirt and earth, and pulling himself to his feet. Ever the perfect gentleman, Sora mustered a grin as he reached down to help Riku up, but was promptly shoved to the side with a playful laugh and tackle. The two went on like that, joking and jibing for some way-- slamming into each other just to see who could knock who over first, who was stronger, who was weaker, and who had the boniest and most painful hips to send a boy sprawling.

Preoccupied as he was with his chipper kind of company, Riku was a bit surprised when Sora drew to a halt. They must have walked a mile, at least, from where they'd initially set off towards the fabled 'lake,' now tucked in amongst a throng of town-homes and private circles and dead-ends. There was a large gap between housing complexes, a grassy slope and bike trail leading down towards a park of sorts-- a loop of sorts. Around... the 'lake.'

"Here it is." And it-- the lake-- was the most disgusting thing Riku had ever laid eyes on. The thing was a murky brown-gray, dotted by an occasional blob of something that was most definitely _not_ seaweed and clotted throughout by fogs of algae and pond scum. It stunk of bird shit and the generic sort of refuse that comes from old trash cans, from the yellow sludge that congeals in the bottom of the can over time.

Yes. It was, without a doubt, incredibly... indescribably... depressing. And Riku instantly found himself wishing he had never hoped for an ocean of any sort in the first place.

Staring out at what Sora claimed to be Light Infantry Lake, Riku could only blink stupidly and mutter a lame sort of "Oh." And Sora, picking up on the disappointment he had seen coming from figurative _miles_ away, seemed to keep his mouth shut if only to keep from saying _'I told you so.'_

"Sora?"

"I _told_ you you wouldn't like it." One sneaker lifted and scuffed brutally against the black tar of the bike path-- cracked and moss-filled and falling apart. Sora's head was bent down, thumbs through his belt-loops, almost as though he was embarrassed just by having had the nerve to show Riku the lake and expect anything other than absolute horror. "Come on," he said after a long, drawn-out kind of moment. "Let's get outta here."

From shade to shade, Riku and Sora ambled along at a drag of a pace. Riku felt the need to say something, but didn't know what it was. Didn't know what he could say that wouldn't sound stupid or weak. So instead he said nothing at all. One thumb hooked through his pocket, the other hand hung freely at his side. And, side by side, the boys stood at the intersection, at the crosswalk, cars streaming past and heat pouring down. And while nothing felt perfectly right, neither could honestly say there was anything really... _wrong_ with it, either.

It wasn't right, no, but they belonged there nonetheless-- in all the heat and sweat and drudge of it all. Sora got to thinking this and Riku got to thinking this. And for a split second, the two of them shared a thought. Whether they realized it or not, who knows. But they did and they smiled for it.

"Riku... You know, if you want..." Sora's open mouth curled at the corners, voice caught and trying again. "If you want, we..." Throat cleared, hands fisted, but his feet kept the same pace of one right after the other. "If you _want_ to, we could go out sometime. Like, I don't know... on... a _real_ date or something. Not to the lake. Out for dinner. At a nice restaurant..." Sora scrunched up his face into some kind of concentrated expression, thought on it a moment, and then nodded.

With a triumphant grin, he tilted his head over and up to face Riku. "Yeah," he said. "I wanna take you out to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant."

For a minute, Riku didn't know whether to be shocked or just pleased. _But what the fuck am I kidding? I mean..._

"...I'd like that."

"Really?"

"I'd only say it if it was true."

"...Yeah, you're right. You're a horrible liar anyway."

"Hey!"

"But it's tru-ue, Ri-ku."

"Maybe. But you're not allowed to say so."

"Oh?"

"It's just not allowed. _Strictly_ prohibited."

"You're a _fabulous_ liar Riku."

"Ew. 'Fabulous.'"

"Marvelous, _spectacular_ liar!"

"More like it."

"Amazingly _sexy_ liar."

"Keep going."

They came to Mayako's house as they drew near the end of the day, after a brief exchange of long-awaited cell phone numbers and promises of pasta and garlic bread. Sora stood out on the stoop, his hands shifting from his side pockets to the open air, and from there circling around Riku's waist and seeking out _his_ pockets instead. Head pressed against Riku's chest and hands successfully in those back pockets, Sora smiled. "Sooo, this is the great Riku Wataya without the pills to pop and drugs to dull him down... And you said I wouldn't like him."

"Yeah, well, you don't really know me yet."

Sora just laughed, some sort of strange, barked, choked kind of sound. He leant up, brushed his lips against Riku's cheek, and shook his head before leading the taller boy back around the house. Behind Mayako's house and attached directly to the back of it was a screened, roofed porch that had been added on some years back. And it was the porch that Sora pointed to as they drew nearer.

"Let's go on the roof," Sora said. "We'll watch the sun set up there. It'll be cool."

Inside they went, up the stairs and to the second floor. By clambering out the bathroom window, they easily made it out onto the back roof, each staking their spot beside the other, legs bent and elbows resting on knees. They talked about everything and nothing in particular-- about the neighborhood, the sky, and the view from the rooftop. Sora was particularly chatty on that last subject, excited when he told Riku about some sort of lowly feeling people got from walking around on the ground all the time. How, by being up there on that roof, they were escaping it.

"Birds," he told Riku, "must be really, really happy people! They've got the sky-- and the ground, too, if they want it!"

Riku laughed, punched the boy playfully in the arm, but there was no stopping Sora. He was up, standing on the roof there, sure of his feet as he smirked at Riku's suddenly concerned expression. He held his arms out in a flyer's fashion, poised and ready to spring from the roof, to step into thin air.

"You know," he said. "I heard this one poem once. This Navajo poem. You know all about the Navajos, right?"

Riku lifted a shoulder in what was supposed to be some sort of shrug. "I know _of_ them, if that's what you mean," he replied. How much was there to know about a bunch of old indians anyway?

"Well--" and Sora was up and walking, back slightly arched, elbows slightly bent as he spoke aloud, "--They had this poem of theirs. A chant, really. _They _put rhythm to their words. Shouted 'em, sang 'em, stomped around."

Sora was rising and falling on the balls of his feet, a smile spreading slow and easy like a sunrise-- "'Beauty is before me and beauty is behind me. Above me and below me hovers the beautiful.'" Sora was grinning then and he spun wildly to face Riku-- "'I am _surrounded_ by it!'"-- rose onto his toes, held it strong in the twilit sky-- "'I am _immersed_ in it!'"-- and tilted his head back slowly. He said: "'In my youth I am aware of it, and in my old age, I shall walk quietly the beautiful trail.'"

"...It's... different," Riku murmured. "From Kerouac's things."

"Kerouac is new and short and direct."

Falling back to Sora's sides, his arms seemed almost too long for his body, the shadows they cast too harsh, too dark against his summer skin. If he had ascended to some otherworld for some moment, it was obvious to Riku that he was back in full now-- real and awkwardly human on the face of the earth.

"Kerouac is all that," Sora explained-- careful, calculating. "But the indians are old and ancient and pure. They didn't talk about regret," he said, "because they knew nothing about it. No hookers, no cities, no drugs, no pollution. Anything and everything was minor and natural. _They_ had _honor_."

While he had been speaking, he hadn't noticed as his voice tapered off into nothing more than a mutilated form of a whisper. When he sat down, the damp roof shingles dug at his skin through the fabric of his clothes and that almost unbearable lowliness was pressing down and in on him, even up on the roof as he was. Riku's arm sought out his shoulder, his warmth in the dark. And Riku felt the tremor as Sora blinked owlishly and spoke again.

"Riku?"

"Mm?"

"Have we all become honor-less?"

"_Huh?_"

"_Honor-less_. Do we just not think anymore? Or respect things or people-- anything? I mean, maybe we're all just _stupid_ or something. Do you think so, Riku?"

What Riku wanted to do was to push him away. Not too far-- the boy would tumble right off the roof, for sure-- but far enough away so Riku could look him square in the eyes and tell him off about it. 'You should know better than to hit me with this deep stuff,' he would say. 'Go ask Kairi. She'd know. She'd tell you. She knows and tells you everything anyway.' But some part of Riku didn't want that. Some part of him wanted to shake Sora up, to dizzy him with some kind of brilliance, some kind of answer.

But...

"I'm not sure," Riku said. "Maybe. Maybe we all got new and stupid over time."

From down below in the backyard itself, the flicker of a lightning bug caught against the tree, shone bright up against it, and then faded away once more. In the wake of a long-gone summer shower, the neighborhood found itself in the quiet dusk, a pocket of a world for the two boys on the rooftop.

"I hope," Sora said, "that there's a peace of mind that comes with death."

"A natural death. Not a tragedy."

"Yeah."

"And that we'll 'walk quietly the beautiful trail' and all that jazz?"

"...Yeah." Sora smiled. "Something like that."

Riku didn't want to see the stars come out. He tried not to be thankful when Sora said he had to go.

x x x

Mayako was out. Her husband was in the basement.

Riku had the second floor to himself an an unbridled sort of rampant need to find that paper stork. He didn't know why, really. Maybe the bird had somehow possessed him and had been puppeteering his body all day just to lead him to that one defining moment-- that one moment in which he set his hand on the doorknob to his aunt and uncle's room, twisted, and pushed in. Regardless, that was how he came to be standing in the doorway, moving _through_ the doorway then, and well into and past the room's threshold.

Quiet as he could, he sifted through the sheets and stray clothing, checked under pillows, books, magazines and lamps, candles, cups, coasters and clocks. Still no stork to be found.

Riku's eyes came to rest on the wardrobe. The one his uncle had been fumbling around in that morning, pulling out that polo shirt and avoiding Riku's gaze and screaming guilt. It wasn't that hard to find, really. The inner-detective within Riku was a bit disappointed. There, near the bottom of a neatly folded stack of polos and tees, a corner of paper could just be seen protruding from the fabric. And, pinched and pulled between Riku's fingers, the paper revealed itself to be the bird, the stork, in all its happy, maternal glory.

And it was then that Riku heard the squeak of the floorboard. Then that he turned around to face his uncle, dazed and confused within the doorway. Dazed and confused and riddled with guilt.

"It's **mine**! Why did you _take_ it?" Riku slammed his palm again the vanity behind him and it hurt-- _fuck_, it hurt, but there was nothing he could do about it. _Why am I so angry...? _ He gagged, choked, felt something pry around his throat and squeeze slowly, tightly, blocking, sealing... Was it his throat or was he having one of those weird cliche episodes where his heart was-- for some bizarre and anatomically _in_correct reason--_ in _his throat?

He couldn't remember what it felt like to almost die, so in panic he looked down at his feet, at his black sneakers with there colorful faces and smiles.

"It's not yours, Riku..." he heard his uncle tell him. Quiet, soft, easygoing. Like the gesture of a smile. _Fake_. "I'm sorry. I don't know why Nora kept it."

"What my mother kept or didn't keep isn't _any_ of your _fucking_ business! It's not yours!"

"Riku, it's not yours either," his uncle repeated. His voice was as slow and calm as he could make it, sound lingering over each syllable while he tried all the while to push his point home. He took a step forward, further into the room. Riku scrambled backwards, hitting the wall as Mayako's husband told him, "It's not yours. It wasn't Nora's either."

"Why would it be in her things if it's not hers?" Riku replied hotly, lividly-- his palm resenting him for the slam, his back resenting him for the hit. The slam, the hit, and something felt wrong with his pulse. Something felt like it was pushing his veins through his skin and about to rip them open and rushing for all the world to take in, a true-blue and blood-red like never witnessed before. They'd rope all around his weird little body and everyone could say how pretty and colorful he was while he felt like he was either being bled to death or being inundated with it-- with blood and water, milk and honey.

"It's just a memory, Riku. Nothing more. That's what photo albums do. They keep _memories_." His uncle was there, he was reaching out for the bird and Riku was holding it tighter, threatening to crumpled it in his hands, wanting to kill it and crush it and know that his veins were still inside his skin and could still keep him alive and killing.

_That was a brutal thought. I should get rid of it. Fuck._

"That memory wasn't hers to keep," he heard.

"It's mine. It was in her things. The album was hers. Now it's mine. This is mine, too."

"No it's not, Riku..."

"**Yes **it **is**, okay? And if you touch my stuff again, I'll--" _explode_ "--just **don't** touch my stuff again. Stay **out** of my way. And **don't** talk to me."

"Riku, did you even read the back of the card? Do you even know whose that is?"

_M. Mine. ...No. Not mine. May's._

"...Mayako doesn't have any children."

"No. She doesn't. Does she?"

"I don't understand."

"You're not supposed to. It's not yours to understand."

"No, this _is_ mine."

"It's more mine than it is yours."

Riku stared at his uncle for a very long moment. He was trying to read the man's face, but was almost a little horrified to find that he couldn't understand what it was he saw there. It was grief, for sure, but what kind of grief-- Riku didn't know. The man's eyes betrayed a near-nothing, nothing but a reflection of one hand outstretched toward Riku, palm bent up and cupped, waiting.

"What happened?" The paper was gently nestled in the palm of Riku's uncle, curled inward as calloused fingers closed around it. All the while, Riku still spoke. "If I have to live here with her," he said, "I have a right to know."

"No. You just think you do. But you really don't."

"_Please._ Tell me."

"I... can't." There was a hand that fell on his shoulder-- the one not holding the paper bird. It stayed for maybe half a moment, then lifted and left with the passing of the shadow and the guilty, guilty relative. "Sorry, Riku."

_"There are things you don't know, Riku. Things about this world, these people, this family, even, that you just don't know. That, perhaps, it's better if you never know."_

_How am I supposed to be a part of this fucking family if they won't even **let me in**?_

_"You're **locking us out**, Riku..."_

Figuratively speaking, the world is, was, and always _will be _full of fools on opposite sides of the door, some pushing, some pulling, forever locked and blocked from the other, greater side.

Riku realized this then, standing alone in a room that wasn't his, in a room that didn't even have the feel of belonging to it. He wanted his mother's perfume to hover delicately in that air, he wanted his father shoes lined up against that wardrobe. He would have gladly sacrificed both aunt and uncle to have them back.

He pushed, the rest of the world pulled. But Riku was strong enough and stupid enough to not let go. To get nowhere.

x x x

_"Hey Dad?"_

_"Yeah?"_

_"..."_

_"What is it, Riku?"_

_"I don't know. It's nothing."_

_"Getting too dark for you? Tired yet?"_

_"No. I... It's cool. You know. Being out here like this. I guess I just never looked at the stars all that much. It's nice. I mean, I don't understand them or **know** them or anything. Wish I did..."_

_"There's still time. Plenty of time, Riku. You can learn every single one-- every single constellation and you've got all the time in the world. There's no hurry."_

x x x

_"Riku, are you okay?"_

_"Yeah..."_

_"You look really pale... My god, Riku, you're--!"_

x x x

"Riku, your phone's going off!"

"Huh?" _How did Kairi get-- stupid question_. Riku was flailing around the guest bed, eyes wide open but not quite registering much of anything as he hit the floor with a resounding thud, legs and feet still effectively twisted and tied within the sheets. Through a closed door and a morning hallway atmosphere, Riku could hear the cheerful chirp of his phone going off somewhere, Kairi's voice singing right out over it--

"Want me to answer it?" _Probably Sora. Italian dinner. Sora and dinner. Sweet._

"Yea--" _--wait--_ "wh--" _--who else has my-_- " _wh-- _whoa, wait a minute!" _Fuck. Roxas. Please don't be Roxas. Please don't be fucking--_

"Hello! ...Huh? Oh, Riku will be right here in just one second!" And he _was_ there in just one second, half clothed and staggering out the door and down the hall-- tangled hair a veritable tumor growing on the side of his head, eyes glaring, arms flailing.

"KAIRI!" he hissed.

"What, what?"

"Hang up the phone!"

"But he wants to _talk_ to you."

"I told you to hang it up. _Please_."

Frowning at Riku, Kairi promptly stuck one hand on one defined little hip, tilting the phone back towards her mouth. "...May I ask who's calling? ...Roxas?"

"I don't want to talk to him," Riku pleaded. Distractedly, his hands came up to work at the ridiculous mass of hair on his head, but he only really succeeded in pulling and snapping and hurting all the more. _Fuck Roxas. Fuck Roxas. _

"Why not?" Kairi asked.

"Would you just _hang_ _up_ the damn _phone_?" Riku snapped.

"_Honestly_, Riku!" Before he was quite aware of what had happened, Riku was broad-sided by his cell phone at large. Well. Not broad-sided, necessarily. Smacked upside the head. In the front. A dead-on hit with the center of his forehead that left his eyes out of focus and his head in some sort of shambled mess on the floor.

"Oww." But sure enough, Kairi's plan had some sense of brilliance to it. Riku was now holding the offensive phone and the voice was blaring right on though, a determined tenor and a pleasant ring to it--

"Riku, please talk to me for just one goddamn minute already, would--?"

Click. Beeeeep.

"..."

"Riku Wataya. _That_. Was really, _really_ rude." Kairi wasn't angry. Riku didn't want to see Kairi angry. But she was disappointed. No denying that. And really, he didn't want to see her disappointed either. Suddenly he wanted her out. He wanted her to just go away for good and not come back. He was sick of feeling evil, somehow, and her looking at him like that... He always felt evil. Always felt he was in the wrong.

"I don't really give a _fuck_ about being rude. _Why_ did you answer the phone?"

"Because it was ringing and I thought you _told_ me to. Why did _you_ treat that poor boy like _shit_?"

"I just didn't want to talk to him." A flash of Roxas behind the eyes and-- yes, still there, still as Roxas as ever. Painfully indifferent when Riku needed him to care and painfully alive when Riku wished he would just die, already. "He's from back home. I don't have anything to do with him anymore."

"Doesn't sound like it to me."

"Would you just _drop_ it already?" Determined not to let Kairi and Roxas combine forces and destroy his promising day of Sora goodness, Riku made for the stairs and hoped he could shove Kairi out the door once they reached bottom. She tagged along, insistent and concerned, cloying and sweet. _ Why am I hating her right now? Why the fuck am I hating her?_ There was no reason for it, really. She was just...

They reached the ground floor. Riku drew them to a halt in front of the door. God, he wanted to kick her out. But she just kept talking. She wouldn't stop talking. Wouldn't stop worrying, wouldn't stop wringing her hands.

_Her hands._

"Riku... I'm not trying to pry into your past. I'm sorry. But..." Riku's eyes dropped to Kairi's hands as she spoke. He watched them clench slightly. He took in the sight of the polka-dotted wristband hanging limply on her skinny arm above her skinny hand. He couldn't tell if the sight was any better than her disappointed eyes. "You know," she said quietly. "I'm just trying to look out for Sora more than anything else. I don't want him going out with boys who will just hang up on him one day and not speak to him again."

"Roxas and I were _never_ going out, alright?

"He sounded really upset to me, Riku." The hand became a fist in full and Riku closed his eyes to block out the sight. He knew Kairi was getting angry with him. Getting frustrated with him. He couldn't blame her. He was frustrating himself, too, dammit.

"I think maybe he misses you a lot and just wants to talk. Right?"

"He _doesn't_ miss me. Trust me."

"Well I don't think he was just using you for sex like you think."

Completely thrown for a loop by that one, Riku's eyes snapped open wide, registering Kairi for what felt like the first time that day. She wasn't a parasite, she wasn't a nasty sort of scar showing up to mar his already fucked up life. She was a smart girl with an intuition and a knack for assumption. A smart girl currently sporting a sad little smile and a broken sort of gaze.

"Oh, Riku," she said. "I might not understand most things about you, but you read like an open book on this one."

"Look, it wasn't _like_ that, okay?"

She wasn't pleading, wasn't reasoning anymore. She was frustrated. Angry. Protective.

"Oh, it _wasn't_, was it? Well then, why don't you **tell** me what it was like, Riku? Huh? Why don't you tell me just what **exactly** you thought he was to you. Because it seems to me that, whatever you though was between you two-- or whatever you thought _wasn't_ between you two-- I don't think you both thought the same thing. Or the same _not_-thing. Don't you understand? I mean... you get why I'm worried, right?"

_She's just trying to protect Sora. She's just trying to make sure her little fucking baby doesn't get hurt. Just because she couldn't screw him--_

"Look, Kairi. You're the one who introduced me to Sora. You're the one who's been trying to hook us up, okay? Not. Me. _You_."

"Riku, Sora isn't _like_ me! Please-- _please_ don't make the mistake of thinking we're the same person. With the same ideals... We're... we're _not_."

"You're right. Sora's not a fucking _slut_ like you."

Oh.

Kairi's mouth hung open for a moment. And then it was as though, in her lapse of thought entirely, Riku picked up her intuition, held it between his own two hands, and looked straight on through to Kairi-- the world Kairi knew. One of friends and semi-casual sex, one of differing ideals and the repercussions they hauled alongside them. She'd heard the words before-- of that, Riku was sure. --_fucking _slut_ like you._

"...Riku..."

But he couldn't stop. He wanted to-- _had_ to stop. _Knew_ he had to stop. But he was so angry and so full of this sudden resentment towards the _one girl _who had let him have so much and was threatening to take it aw--

x x x

_"Riku, I told you to clean your room."_

_"Ma... mmyyy...!"_

_"No, now I told you a million times! I won't give them back until you do it, understand?"_

_"Ma-myyy!"_

_"You come find me when you're finished and I'll give your toys b--!"_

x x x

--ay, she was taking it away and it was cold and ruthless and spiteful. And Riku wanted to hate her. He wanted to hit her and holler and kick and scream--

He wanted to make her pay for how much she'd hurt him.

"Yeah. You know, you **are** a slut. Your parents were _right_ to jump to conclusions-- that day they walked in on you in front of me like that. They've probably walked in on it countless times. You screwing around with some fucked-up guy. You _using_ them-- _manipulating_ the hell out of them... You're _pathetic_. You couldn't get with Sora so you just settle for screwing anyone you can, right? Well what about _me_? You want to _fuck_ me, don't you, Kairi? Don't you?"

"Riku! St-stop it, okay? Stop!"

He'd won. She was crying. She wouldn't stop crying.

"O-Okay, so maybe you're right. Maybe I am a slut. Maybe I'm j-just a st-stupid slut who doesn't know anything and can't help a-anybody. I'm _sorry_."

He'd _won_, but he wouldn't stop. He wanted to kill something inside her so she was dead and gone and would pay for how much she'd hurt him.

"You _do_ want to fuck me. Don't you."

Would pay for how much her dying had hurt him.

x x x

_"Mommy...!"_

_"Not until you're finished, understand?"_

_"Maaah-myyy!"_

x x x

_Fuck them. Fuck both of them. _

x x x

"G-Goodnight, Riku Wataya."

He heard the door open, heard it close. Felt the brief warmth of summer air kissing his wrist. He realized he'd won then, but then he didn't understand what winning was. It wasn't something that made sense. But...

It was... _odd_, what happened then. One minute Riku was there, standing and watching the door close and hating his-- hating Kairi so much. The next he was falling-- his arm slamming against the hall table and cracking-- _Fuck, I'll bet I broke it_-- his body colliding with the floor, a heavy thud and spots and dark all swimming across his vision. He couldn't quite think of what to say. He couldn't quite figure out if he should say much of anything at all.

"Sora..."

Riku felt a searing pain tear up his chest, separate from the ache already pulsing at his arm, at his head. Something was being driven into the center of him and piercing the core and destroying that thing-- that _something_ that was alive. He was dimly aware that it had happened before and it was happening again. And he felt like--

_Damn, if I'm going to die now, I probably shouldn't have said all those godawful things to Kairi. _

From his curled position lying sideways on the floor, Riku had a good glimpse of his sneakers. They looked a little worse for wear, but then again, that was what happened to sneakers. You walked all over town with them and they kept your feet nice and protected and you eventually threw them away. Worn-through holes or growth or simple change in fashion-- that was the death of all shoes.

_But why the fuck am I thinking about that? When--_

"Mom..."

--_a little... pathetic. That I can't-- away from it. That -- on the floor, twitching like a dying bug. _

"Ah... any... body?"

_...Maybe I **am** just a dying bug. God, what a thought. What a fucking thou--gh--t--_

x x x

_"Hey Dad?"_

_"Ye--?"_

_"..."_

_"Wha-- it, Riku?"_

_"I -- know. It-- nothing."_

_"--tting too dark for you? Tired y--?"_

x x x

_I am tired... I'm really... fucking... tired... But I don't want to die. I **don't** want to die... I'm not like that. _

x x x

It was Kairi who found Riku two minutes later. She opened the front door, face still red and swollen with tears and hurt, and felt the wood connect with something soft but solid on the other side. Riku's arm slipped from his chest, where it had been cradled so carefully, and hit the floor with a nearly inaudible _thunk_.

But it was a noise that rung and echoed and screamed throughout Kairi's ears and took up residence within the in-between, in the hollows of her memory. The _thunk_ would stay, long after she had run for the phone and cried not in hurt, but terror-- and terror alone.

(x) (x) (x)

As always, feedback is appreciated. I'll try and update Suburbia at least once more this month, but I can't make any promises. Thanks for reading!

Oh, and just as a note, Sora's 'angel mine' phrase is taken from Jack Kerouac's poem of the same name, just as the Navajo poem is, well, a Navajo poem. More on that later.


	6. Oh Woe!

**Suburbia**

'Oh Woe!'

There was a thick smudge of red somewhere in his vision-- a bloodstain, he thought. S_ome weird kind of leftovers of myself._ _And this whole thing is just some out-of-body experience, maybe. A prelude to death. _ But rather than blurring and shrinking away as the image well should have in Riku's mind, it merely sharpened. Intensified. As the picture grew in definition, so did Riku's awareness of the one prevailing fact: _ I'm not dead. I'm _not_ dead._

There was a pulse between his ears that wouldn't quite go away, a dull and heavy throb in his left arm-- broken, like he'd thought. _Just figures._

"Morning, sleepyhead." The red blur-- as Riku should have guessed, turned out to be Kairi, her hair a vibrant shock and smear within the sterile white walls of the hospital room. She looked like hell, Riku couldn't help but note. Stick-skinny with hollowed, sunken eyes and an unbrushed plait hanging limply over one shoulder. She was smiling, though. _Relieved_. It was something Riku could only think about with some amount of shock, for he could still remember the things he'd told her, the words he'd spat in some sort of severely misplaced anger-- _"He's not a _slut_ like you."_

"You've been out for over a day," Kairi told him. She was rummaging around in her purse while she spoke, a hair elastic around her bony wrist catching the light, shining it back into Riku's eyes. "May and her husband were here all night, but he had to go into work this morning and May was falling asleep on her feet, so I told them I'd be happy to come in." She finally pulled something out of her purse, a jar of some sort, from what Riku could tell. "Are you hungry? You should be starving."

It took Riku a moment to coordinate his mouth, and even when he managed to get it opened and producing words, it still felt as thought his brain was giving orders miles and miles away from the rest of him, his speech slow and sluggish. "Not... really."

"You should eat something." With a pop, the lid of the jar Kairi had brought was easily removed, and she reached over towards the bedside table, snagging a spoon that sat forgotten amongst a cold hospital meal of a questionable something-or-other.

"What _is_ that?" Riku asked, obviously meaning the sludge that Kairi spooned out of the jar a moment later. Pink in color and slightly lumpy in texture, Riku was almost tempted to think it was--

"Applesauce," Kairi said.

"Why's it pink?"

"It has candy in it."

Riku blinked.

"I made it myself," Kairi insisted, as though that were explanation enough for everything. "It's a family recipe. Sort of. My grandma used to make it all the time and she put red-hots in it to make it cinnamony and sweet." She pushed the spoon closer to Riku's mouth while she spoke, and-- still feeling groggy and confused as all hell-- well, there really wasn't much Riku could do aside from opening his mouth and allowing the girl to spoon the applesauce right on in.

As far as mushed up apples went, those mushed up apples seemed exceptionally good.

"I made applesauce all day yesterday after the ambulance took you to the hospital," Kairi said with a tiny fraction of a smile. "May went with you over there. They were really worried because... normally when people have heart attacks, they use--"

"Sorry," Riku cut in. "But, uh... is... Sora here?" As much as he appreciated Kairi's presence, Kairi's applesauce, and Kairi's apparent forgiveness of their argument from the day before, Riku still couldn't help but feel a bit put off knowing that it was still only Kairi there with him and not Sora. Come to think of it, Kairi hadn't even mentioned Sora once when explaining what all had happened-- who had come to visit him and stay with him when he was out like that.

Yet no sooner had the words left Riku's mouth did he know something was wrong. That much alone was obvious in the way Kairi froze, eyes wide and worried, mouth partially opened in preparation for some response which she still hadn't quite figured out how to word properly. "Sora..." she tried, trailed off, then tried again. Softer this time, her words sounding almost in time with the steady beep of the heart monitor at the foot of the bed. "I called Sora yesterday... after you were taken to the hospital. He told me. Everything. About the medicine, about how... he told you to stop taking it. And you did...?"

Riku waited for Kairi to continue and Kairi waited for Riku to object. To say something-- _anything_ in his own defense. But his mouth remained sealed, shut tight in a firm line while he waited her out.

"He feels awful, you know," she finally said. "Well, worse than awful."

"But it wasn't his fault."

"Would you really have stopped taking the pills if Sora hadn't told you to?"

"But it wasn't his _fault_," Riku repeated.

He thought for a moment that Kairi had just gone and thrown in the towel with her head bent like it was. Or maybe all the hours she'd spend hovering over his hospital bed were catching up with her and she'd up and gone to sleep on him.

But that was before he noticed the shake of her shoulders and before he heard the tremor in her voice when she managed to croak out: "Riku... what are we gonna do if you die, huh?" She was sobbing openly-- flat out weeping into her open palms with so much force that it looked as though she was making an effort to drown herself in her own tears. But she wouldn't stop asking, stop pressing for guidance. "What're we gonna _do_ Riku?" she pleaded. "What're we gonna **_do_**...?"

"Kairi..."

"Please, _please_..." _And here I was thinking she was the only stable one. Well. Damn. _ "Don't die on us, Riku. Don't die, Riku."

One arm-- the one not then punctured with IV drip-tubes and the like-- snaked its way out from the starched sheets draped across Riku, coming to rest rather awkwardly on Kairi's shoulder. He almost considered patting her, but that would've just shot the entire situation up to even greater levels of... well, awkwardness.

So he just kept it there, that hand of his, a little startled by how heavy it felt, how much effort it took not to let it tumble off and away and think nothing of it. "I'm not going to die, Kairi," he said. "At least, not soon or anything. It's okay."

"Don't **die**..."

"Look, I'm telling you I'm not going to die, okay? What more do you want me to say?"

"I want you to _promise_ me-- _swear_ you're going to try living, okay?"

"What?"

"_Okay_? Swear it!" While Riku's face remained relatively confused and disturbingly distant, Kairi's face took on a sort of desperate scowl as she grappled with the hand on her shoulder, digging in her nails and fingertips, drawing his attention back towards her viciously. She meant business. That much was for sure.

"_Swear_ it, Riku. _Swear_ you won't give up. Swear you'll keep living."

"Kai--" _This is stupid. Scratch that. This is worse than stupid. This is just... pathetic? _

"**Swear** it!"

"I swear, I swear."

"_Say_ it, Riku. _All_ of it."

"I swear I'll live?"

"Even if you don't want to."

"Even if I don't want to."

"Even if you want to die. Even if you don't love us-- _any_ of us. Even if you just want to let your heart break. Because that's what it is, right? What you've got?"

Riku winced as Kairi's nails bit further into his skin, but he took it in stride. If Kairi wanted to beat the living shit out of him, that'd be perfectly okay. Hell knows that if anyone called _Riku_ a fucking slut, they would be pissing blood for weeks. So he figured Kairi's wrath was well-endured right about then.

_'Even if you just want to let your heart break...'_

_Stress cardiomyopathy. Broken heart syndrome. You can now die of a broken heart-- no strings attached, no down payment if you act now and destroy some valuable part of your life._ Riku probably would've found it a bit funny if he hadn't been a cool observer of the catch. Of the 'death not guarenteed' subscript. Now he was stuck putting up with it all over again, people looking at him sideways, watching their words and their ways, trying not to say or do anything that might throw him into some never-ending black hole of teenage angst and hell.

And yet Kairi was oblivious to his thoughts. Perhaps her own distress somehow distorted that womanly intuition of hers. She was still there in that room, tearing up over what Riku considered to be the broad side of nothing, clutching his hand and willing life into him, saying, "We need you even if you don't need us."

For lack of a better thing to say, Riku said the only thing he could. The patented two-word system to get him out of any trouble, even when he hadn't the foggiest idea as to what the trouble was in the first place.

"I'm sorry," he mumbled.

To Riku's dissapointment, Kairi took it. She took it with a smile and didn't suspect him in the least-- never doubted his word or sincerity. In her mind, Riku really _was_ sorry. In her mind, Riku had learned his lesson. He'd understood he'd acted foolishly and would certainly never do it again.

Such was not the case, but Kairi didn't have to know. Kairi _needn't_ know.

But Riku was still strangely put-off by her blind faith in him. He wanted that angry, clawing girl from moments ago, the one forcing swears of this and that out of his mouth. Not the sweet, well-meaning girl he had here. Not the one he didn't want to hurt.

"Do you need anything, Riku?" she asked him, all forgiveness, all understanding. A small, tepid sort of smile was on her face like a peace offering when she spoke then. Riku cringed inwardly-- wondered why he could be so mean to her, why he felt like he had to lie and stab her innocence in the back.

"No. Thanks." He was still tired. Still only half there, really. Still reeling from the fact that he was still capable of even _being_ anything at all-- other than a corpse. Kairi had her mouth open just slightly, most likely ready to blunder on with an '_Are you sure, Riku? You need to eat more, you need to get your strength back, you need to get better!_' Before she could get rolling, he cut her off with a well-placed smile.

He'd been practicing at it. The smile was almost up to its old standard, and if no one looked too closely, they wouldn't see the duct tape lines running over jagged edges. Alright, so it wasn't as beautiful and charming and captivating as Sora's smile. Few things probably were. Riku wasn't trying to compete. He was just trying to throw Kairi off a trail he knew she was bound to pick up on eventually.

"Really," he told her, "I'm fine."

She gave him a small nod, told him she was going to call up Mayako and see about getting Riku out of 'this crummy old white room' and back into the comfort of his own home. Riku almost objected to the own-home bit-- he hardly considered Mayako's house any sort of home to him. But rather than that, he was suddenly reminded of a very pressing issue he'd pushed to the side. A very pressing issue having to do with a certain aunt and a certain paper bird.

"Wait, Kairi." Obediently, the girl paused in the doorway, head turned to look back at Riku, hand outstretched to rest on the doorknob. Riku licked his lips, swallowed and asked, "Does this hospital keep medical records...?"

"Yeah, a lot do. They _are_ hospitals after all. Why?"

"I have... I need for you to do something for me."

x x x

According to Kairi, getting the papers had been no problem. _"No really, Riku. It was a cinch. No big."_ She had simply walked up to the nearest male receptionist and posed her question.

"Uh, hey there! _Listen_, I have a _question_. Let's say I have a patient here who wants to check up on his med file for some information. I mean, like, see..." A little hair-twirling here, stretching, leaning forward, down, elbows on the desk before her, lips puckered into a thoughtful frown.

The receptionist gulped.

"He broke his foot this one time, yanno? And he broke his arm _this_ time. He just wanted to look and see his list of injuries. _You_ know, just to _humor_ himself while he's stuck in that bed... All... _alone_... in that bed." A sage nod, blue eyes hidden beneath thick, black lashes. Even in her tired, haggard sort of state, the world had to hand it to Kairi. She had her way when she so demanded it.

Within five minutes, she'd managed to get herself a shaky, pimply-faced escort towards the back room-- a hellhole of files and folders and who knew what else. Kairi thought to wonder how many dead trees that one room alone contained. The number dizzied her, made her want to sit down or scream or do both, but she simply smiled and followed alongside her poor victim, finally coming to the end of a row. The W's. Mayako had kept her maiden name.

"W-wataya, was it?"

"Yep! This is it!" Kairi's hand shot out and grabbed the file labeled "Wataya, Mayako Rin" and waved it around with a delighted little smile, giggle, and a distracting-as-all-hell bend forward, giving the boy quite the view before she uttered a chipper little "Thankyousomuch!" and zipped out of view. The kid never had time to glimpse the file. He was too busy trying to dig around in his pockets for an inhaler he suddenly, _desperately_ needed.

Again, there was a similar process to get the papers scanned. Kairi was thankful for the hospital's bounty of male workers that day. And yet while she studied the vending machines and listened to Mayako's papers being scanned and copied and printed away, Kairi couldn't help but laugh a little.

A little sadly, even.

It wouldn't really have mattered if all the workers in the entire building were female. Kairi would've gotten what she wanted in the end, no matter what it took. It was for Riku, she told herself. It was for a friend who needed something. Who was Kairi to ever deny a friend in need?

She busied herself by mentally tallying all the calories that existed inside the vending machine before her. The waiting room was a drab sort of grey with a sick-colored lavender-and-sage complimenting pattern. Hideous, as far as Kairi was concerned. The place should have been made with primaries. With real modern art, if they had to go that way. Blues and yellows and reds. If not primaries, than bold shades nonetheless. Oranges, purples, greens, magentas. If it was bright, it would have been better. It should have been better. People came to hospitals to watch people die. They didn't need lavender and sage. They didn't need sedatives. They needed optimism.

She listened to the whirr and buzz of the copier in the other room. By the time the calories had reached up into the hundreds of thousands, Kairi felt sick and ducked into the ladies' restroom.

She emerged looking more withered and stretched than before. But the copies were made. That was something.

x x x

Half an hour later, Riku was safely tucked into the passenger's side of Kairi's car-- rather, Kairi's _parents_' car, as the girl had so dutifully pointed out. Her license was still relatively fresh in her wallet and she was obviously nervous about driving Riku around, her fingers strangling the steering wheel as they rolled slowly, cautiously out of the parking lot. She was apt to forget to turn right on red, was likely to never know when she had the right of way, and all too generous in allowing anyone and everyone to cut in front of her as they pleased.

Still, Riku was glad it was Kairi driving him home and not Mayako. Being alone with Mayako was going to be agony whenever it was that it happened. That much he was sure of. His fingers traced the copied files Kairi had gotten him. She'd never even asked why he'd wanted them in the first place.

Just blindly obeyed his command. No second thoughts. No nothing.

Kairi had a CD playing quietly for the duration of the drive-- a mix, she told him. Most of it was pop, not the pasturized bubble-gum version, but a harder, louder, more eager breed of the stuff, as though the artists had tried so hard to break out of the mold but had just created a more twisted version of it instead. It wasn't enjoyable, but it wasn't unenjoyable either. Riku couldn't complain. Kairi was giving him everything he wanted, but something still felt off in the atmosphere.

Lingering side-effects of a near death experienced?

Riku didn't think so.

"Oh, uh, before I forget, Riku..." A red light had just gone green and it was good excuse for Kairi to not make eye contact with the guy next to her. "I kinda... made a phone call on your cell."

_...O-kaaay. Unless you called someone in China or something, I really don't give a shit. _ Riku blinked, raised an eyebrow, shrugged his shoulders, and readied himself to say just that. "It's okay, I really don't--" _ 'I kinda made a phone call on your cell.' _ There could only have been one reason for Kairi to use Riku's cell phone. "...Wait a minute..."

"Yeah..."

"_Kai_-ri."

"I'm sorry, I _know_ it was the wrong thing to do, okay?"

"Please tell me you're lying."

"I'm not." The girl pressed her bottom lip between her teeth, biting gently and focusing, _focusing_ on the road ahead. Her profile gave the impression of a scared little kid about to set the kitchen on fire. Riku should've opted for resentment or hostility of some sort, but he held it back. After all, she hadn't yet come out and said that-- "I... sort of called Roxas." _Well, never mind _that_ idea. Goddamnit._ "I figured he should know, Riku. Even if you don't care about him, he obviously worries about you and--"

"He _doesn't_ _worry_ about me, Kairi. Okay? Roxas doesn't worry about anyone but Roxas. The person who's _worried_ is Naminé."

Kairi tilted her head thoughtfully to one side, the motion of the car seeming to follow the tilt and make a gentle left turn. The question was obviously right there just dying to be asked-- _"Who's Naminé, Riku?"_-- but Kairi held her tongue. Whether it was for Riku's benefit or her own, he was never quite sure. He just shrugged it off, just as he'd done with so many things that day. _Heart attack? Pssh. Kairi crying her eyes out? No big deal. Probably breaking some law by swiping Mayako's medical info? Hardly an issue. _

Riku silently figured that he was either still high on some drug or there had been some divine grace bestowed upon him in which he was reverted to his old reckless self of Destiny Islands, but the recklessness had been reverted tenfold and he had been transformed into some heartless baboon in the making.

_Heartless baboon, huh? Clearly it's the drugs. Well, that's something of a relief, I guess. Back to the same old same._

A thick and heavy silence enveloped the car then as Kairi made her way through the denser part of town. Were they in some downtown kind of place? Riku didn't know. Riku didn't know there even was a downtown to the town he'd found himself flung into. It had seemed as though the green grass and automated sprinkling systems had stretched on in all directions, encompassing every part of the mainland country, right up to the shore. And across the shore? A sunken ferris wheel and a boardwalk city sitting on the water. All very abstract. All very disturbing.

As it was, the 'downtown' wasn't much of one. No towering office buildings, no nothing really. Just a shabbier brick, a dirtier concrete, a smoggier air. A billboard poised on giant stilts reading: 'There is no greater measure of your character than the size of your--'

"Cock," Riku muttered, filling in the blank of the word unread. He laughed at his own joke and Kairi made a face, glancing away from the traffic for a split second to try and figure out just what the heck had spurred _that_ on.

"Riku, don't be crude."

A moment's silence. The shuffling of papers as Riku peered into the file clasped in his arms. And then a followup-- "...Riku?"

"Mm?"

"What are... What're you going to do with yourself?"

"...Well first I'm going to start looking through these an--"

"No, I mean-- _really_. What are you going to do? Do you know yet?"

Now, for all of a moment here, Riku was thrown back to a day in March, a day spent contemplating shoelaces and corndogs on a beachside bench. There had been a moment of thoughtlessness-- just a brief moment, really. Not much of one. Not much of anything. It occurred immediately after he looked up from his shoes and towards the corndog in his hand. _Mom and Dad will be here soon. Naminé said she'd try and swing by. Life's alright. But how long will it be like this?_

_How long do I left to spend thinking about absolutely nothing but this meaningless bullshit? **Weird**._

"Hot outside today," Riku said.

"Great job changing the subject, Riku. You can't use my own line against me, you goof."

"Sure I can. Just did."

"Don't be such a smart-alec, would you? Honestly, I should just leave you crippled and helpless on the side of the road. Maybe a band of gypsies would be stupid enough to pick you up. Wouldn't _that_ be exciting?"

"Terribly so. A band of gypsies or a pimp, take your pick."

"The band of gypsies, of course. But they're welcome to have a traveling pimp in their caravan. They're not his harem, though. They're self-respecting gypsies of a sort-- you know the kind, Riku Wataya."

"Well, do these self-respecting gypsies have names?"

"Only the proper ones. And as you know, virutally all self-respecting gypsies who carry on with traveling pimps are very, very proper."

"Are you going anywhere with this or what?"

"Of course I am! Don't be silly, Riku. Now then. Let's just suppose you were picked up by this herd of gypsies and their pimp companion. The gypsies would be running from the law, maybe-- no, wait, better yet, running from society itself, because all the gypsies want to do is exist as free spirits and society could hardly let them get away with a thing like that, you know what I mean? You let some gypsies into the country, let them live as free and unburdened as they want-- next thing you know they're happy as clams, never better, even. Society would never stand for it.

"The pimp, on the other hand, is riddled with problems all his own-- alone in the world, not a single prostitute to his very name-- yes, completely alone, save for his pack of friendly gypsies. And then you come in, half-dead and stupid like you are-- oh, don't look at me like that, Riku-- you don't take your medicine and what do you honestly expect to get? _Stupid_. Anyway, so in you come to the picture, dying and stupid, like I said. And the pimp relays a message from his gypsy companions-- 'cause gypsies are timid people and would much rather the pimp speak for them rather than having them speak themselves. He sits you down by their outdoor, portable, electric stove an--"

"How can the stove be outdoor, portable, _and_ electric?"

"Do you wanna hear what happens to you or not?"

"Sorry. Go right on ahead."

"Right. Anyway. The pimp sits you down at their non-functional, outdoor, portable, electric stove-- happy now?-- and he says to you, 'Riku Wataya, what--'"

"How does the pimp know my name?"

"You _told_ him, your name, okay? Now shush. Anyway. So the pimp says to you, 'Riku Wataya, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' And you don't say anything for a good long while, but when you finally do, you tell him you've got nothing, no plans, no clue. And he smiles and welcomes you into the caravan. Well. Okay, right? That brings about a question. The big H.C. _How come?_ _Because_ none of them have a clue either."

"Good story."

"Wanna hear another?" Rather than await a response, Kairi launched into what Riku thought would be another monologue of sorts, leaving him to tag along behind, to pick up the pieces and put it together as best he could. "Normal-kinda-boy woke up one day at 9:47 and put on his shoes, went to work, lived a normal morning and prepaired himself for another normal day during his normal lunch break spent on the downside of a school-bus."

Kairi's profile gave him half a smile. She was still focused on the traffic ahead like the dutiful new driver she was, but Riku knew that in some bizarre, abstract kind of sense, she was still looking right at him. "We might get a lot of summer showers around here, Riku," she said. "They might turn this place into a suburban steam-bath, but Sora sees the sun every day. You really think it was the sun that blinded him that time? You forget you were standing over him. He couldn't see the sun from that angle. It was you."

_Sora grinned, holding one hand over his eyes, looking up at Riku and wincing from the sunlight. Though Riku didn't know it then, that one split second in time, that one perfect picture sitting right there in front of him on the burning asphalt-- it would stay with him forever as his one lasting impression of Sora._

"You can understand why he's upset, can't you? He feels like he betrayed you somehow."

"But he _didn't_. That's bullshit!"

"Yeah, well, you don't know everything about it, okay, Riku?"

"Then why don't you fucking tell me, huh? I mean-- _Jesus_, is no one _open_ around here? Everyone acts like they've got some big goddamn _secret_ to hide when--"

"Don't patronize us, Riku. Not your aunt. Not Sora. Not me. We all have our secrets to hide, okay? You, too, Riku. What would you call Roxas?"

"You _know_ about Roxas."

Kairi sighed. "That's not the point, Riku. Not everyone does. And I don't know _everything_. And I'm not _nearly_ stupid enough to _press_ the issue."

Riku went silent after that. His fingers itched to toy with the button on the armrest, to move the window up and down. A nervous habit, he figured. Or maybe he was just completely going insane and a little bit of ADD was perfectly alright thrown into the medley of brain-puke he had sloshing around in there. Finally he swallowed, folded his fingers into his palm. He didn't roll down the window. He just glared at the glass.

"You all just expect me to know how to act. I don't, okay?"

The only sound in the car was the turn signal's steady _click-click-click_ as the mix CD silently skipped back to the beginning, ready and eager to play again. As the first notes of some pretty-boy hotshot filled the car-- as the light turned green-- as the car moved right-- Kairi said, "Sora and Hayner had a falling out. It had to do with the mistake Hayner made-- I told you about it."

"And yet I still don't know what it is that happened. How informative."

"You don't need to know aboslutely everything, okay? Look. All you need to know is that _inside_, Sora's an unstable little boy with a massive guilt complex. He wants to do everything and be so amazing. You and I know he's amazing as-is, you know? But he doesn't. He sees flaws with himself that no one else does and he pins the blame of things on himself when no one else would."

'But what fucking teenager _doesn't_ do that?' Riku wanted to howl. _Every goddamn one of us is exactly the same. Aren't we? Aren't we all just emotional bombs waiting to go off? There's no fucking difference!_ But Kairi's tone maintained there was. There was a fine line drawn between teenage angst and true inner turmoil, and certainly-- _certainly_-- Sora and his problems were well apart from the norm. Certainly Sora was special. Certainly Riku was special.

He wanted to light into her. He wanted to go all high and mighty on her. Wanted to act like he knew when he didn't know-- _never_ knew. _Who can really tell who's fucked up and who's just faking? And if you're desperate enough to fake it, doesn't that make you fucked up anyway?_

"You know, Riku," Kairi said softly, "sometimes I look at you and I think something like-- my god, there goes one poor, tragic, hopeless kind of a guy. And then other times I look at you and I figure out that maybe you're not so hopeless, I guess. You're not so powerless after all. You don't have to choose to become like... another Hayner to Sora. That's all I'm saying. Hayner let it slide. You don't have to."

The car had come to a halt. It was with a fair amount of surprise that Riku took in their surroundings-- there they were, back in one piece, more or less. Mayako's house sat squat in front of him, just one in a sea of many identical floorplans and single-family homes. But it was special, he'd thought. Like him. Like Sora. Everything personal was special. That was what made it special. The fact that Riku, in his own little bubble of being, had touched and interacted with it. Riku was a demi-god transplanted and misplaced.

_We all think the same stupid jumbled things. We're all fucked up. We're all self-centered._

He moved to level himself out of the car, clutching the stack of copied papers in one arm-- the casted, broken arm-- his free hand straying closer to the window button. _But to open it now would be dumb. We're already he--_

"Oh, and Riku?"

"What?"

"If you're going to use those papers I copied for you, I have one condition."

"What is it, Kairi?"

Kairi smiled. She patted him on the shoulder and the tips of her fingers curled just slightly into the shirt, just slightly into the skin. "You don't mess with me," she said. "You don't mess with my head. And you sure don't mess with my feelings towards you as a friend. Maybe it's just because you're still a little dazed right now or something. But if you _ever_ pull anything like this again? Yeah. I _won't_ forgive you. And you _will_ miss me. Face it. You're not actively killing yourself, but you're not actively working to prevent it from happening, either. So cut it out. Right now."

Riku... gaped. And he felt like an idiot for gaping so he forced his eyes into blinking action and forced his mouth into closing motion. Gaping turned to staring and Riku looked nothing short of dumbfounded in yesterday's clothes and a hospital haze.

"...Well then! See ya later, Riku Wataya!"

And Kairi left Riku then-- left him in a state just slightly above hopelessness, perhaps, but still a state in which it was all he could do to focus every stockpiled ounce of energy into not worrying about Sora, about Roxas, about Kairi, and about how possibly disasterous it could all so easily become. Oddly enough, he willingly sought out what little refuge the guest bedroom had to offer-- he sat at the desk, spread the copied med file out before him, and began to search.

_A broken rib, collarbone, and wrist-- a benign growth in the back of the throat-- various painkillers, antibiotics, estrogen suppliments, sleep-aids, and-- anti-depressants?_

Curious, Riku's eyes wandered towards the right had margin of the page where the date of perscription was neatly inscribed. '_February 10th, 1989.'_ There appeared a list of dates following this initial one, indicating refill after refill for almost two years. A gap started then-- time flew by with no more happy meds, clear and natural until '_July 2, 2006'_ came into view. Around the time Riku was finally sent to live in the custody of his aunt and uncle.

_Huh. I must really bother her after all. _

He didn't think much of it. He knew his aunt's dislike for him and he knew he probably drove her crazy, whether or not he meant to. But finally Riku reached the information he'd been searching for. '_February 6th, 1989_. _Entered labour: 0443 AM_.'

Riku's birthday.

And yet there was an asterisk mark just beside the delivery time, just above the gender of the child and the blank space for the name. The smooth, black-specked space for the name. No, not blank, then. Just whited out. A white-out name and an asterisk that didn't seem to lead to much of anywhere else on that page.

"Riku?" Jolting upright, Riku nearly sliced his tongue in two with the force he slammed his teeth into it. Halved or not, there was definitely blood. _Crap. Eww. Yuck. Shit._ Mayako was in the doorway, and Riku had turned at an angle he hoped blocked the appearance of most of the papers on his desk. She was staring he was just... distant.

_My birthday. _

"Did Kairi drop you off?" Mayako asked. Riku noticed that, like Kairi, Mayako looked unhealthy. He didn't know if this sudden unhealthiness in everyone had popped up overnight or if it had been there al along and he'd just been too stupid, too wound up in himself to pick up on it. Mayako's hair-- which had once looked pleasantly peppered with gray threads-- now looked blotchy and aged and unkempt in a bun that Riku had once thought stern and intimidating.

She wasn't intimidating, he realized. She was pathetic. Just like Kairi. _Why does every woman I know look like that to me? Why can't they just punch me or hit me or knock some_-- if mental giggles were allowed, Riku would've had a field day. _That's it. I'm insane._

_'Did Kairi drop you off?' Respond, fucktard._

"Yeah," Riku muttered. He had that feeling that his body was about to be split into several parts. One, he figured, would leap to its feet and start waving fists, raving about how Mayako was his crazy psycho-bitch mother who didn't tell him or love him or do anything for him. One would pull his knees to his chin and laugh and laugh and laugh. And one would get up, walk to the nearest bus station, and leave.

But the true, one and _only_ Riku remained seated, unmoving, unblinking.

"I didn't hear you come in..." Her words were tired, her grip on the door frame rather pitiful as she inched further into the room, eyeing her nephew and toeing the line. "Are you feeling alright?" she asked.

"Never better."

"Dr. Jones was at the hospital earlier. You know, the psyc--"

"The shrink."

She ignored it. "You were asleep," she said. "We need to call and schedule an appointment for you... So let me know a day that would be good for you. It should be soon, though." And Riku wasn't quite sure of exactly how many minutes passed between the time Mayako said that and the time she then uttered-- "...How could you _be_ so selfish?"

"..._Excuse_ me?"

"You go around not taking your medicine, acting like a damn child, a damn _fool_. Half the neighborhood thinks you're suicidal, the other half thinks you're just crazy."

The desk chair nearly toppled over as Riku lurched to his feet, the movement not half as forceful as he meant it to be because his legs felt wobbly and his tongue felt numb and nothing-- _nothing_ felt quite like it was supposed to. So what if the entire neighborhood thought he was crazy? With the way they acted, the way they made Riku act towards _himself_-- of course he was bound to be fucking crazy. And try as he might to get these words out, all he could settle for was a lesser version, a more immature version that left him in that hopeless state he'd been in not so very long ago, watching Kairi leave.

"Well I might as well be, right? Hell knows you make me take the fucking _medication_ for it!"

_Why did she pull into Mayako's driveway? She could've just pulled into hers. I live next door to her. Does she not trust me to walk across a lawn? I'm overreacting. Overreacting. And now Mayako's pissed. _

But Mayako wasn't 'pissed.' She was biting her lip and clutching the wall and shaking her head. "Don't talk to me like that," she said.

"Well it's _true_, isn't it? So _what_, Mayako? Is it genetic?"

"...What did you say?"

"You act like I'm such a nut-job-- you've been on this shit for years! And as for the blood-thinner-- or whatever else they _fucking_ give me, why the hell should you care anyway? You'd be happier _and_ saner if I just fucking _died_ already!"

_Crack_.

There was a silence, a thick, angry, and absolute kind of silence that swallowed them whole right about then. When had Mayako crossed the room like that? One moment she'd been at the door, the next she was standing directly across from Riku, her vein-spun hand still trembling from the impact against the side of Riku's face. And her voice-- her entire damn _body_-- was shaking. "Don't you ever say that, you hear me? Never."

In a way, Riku felt morbidly ecstatic. Mayako had hit him. His aunt had struck him flat across the face and he hadn't even seen it coming. Where the hell had she gotten the strength or the nerve? The pushover, the pathetic woman he'd seen just minutes ago was gone and Riku was _so damn happy_. So damn happy he started laughing, but when he realized that laughing would probably only make him seem more insane, he shut up good and fast and did the only thing he figured was appropriate to do in that situation. He glared.

"What happened to your baby, _May_?" he asked. "Did you throw him out the day he was born or did you give him a week just out of your fucking saintly _courtesy_? Did you even bother to name the stupid kid or did you just pass him off as another problem for your brother to deal with?"

"My son is dead," Mayako spat. Her hand looked ready to fly again and Riku almost had it in him to will the thing back against his face once more. But the hand stayed.

"He's standing right in front of you, isn't he?"

"Don't be an idiot, Riku. You are _not_ my son. Thank _God_ you are not my son. And thank _God_ my boy died before--"

"I _saw_ the papers, Mayako, don't bother lying, okay?"

Riku knew he was wrong the very second after the words left his mouth. Any normal mother would've broken down right about then. That was what Riku had been counting on, that was the one thing that could've proven him right. It could've accounted for so many things, it could've been this one divinely messed-up fact about himself that could've contributed to absolutely everything.

_Failed at math? Well, my mother denied I was her son._

_Clinically depressed? Bad mothering._

_Dreadful social skills? See above._

But Mayako didn't break down. She just looked tired and frustrated and thirty years older than she was. She looked like Kairi in the car, like Roxas on a bad day, like Naminé at the end of all things. She looked fed up.

"That's just _it_ about you, Riku. You're self-centered. You're self-obsessed." She shook her head, crossed her arms, and forced Riku back into his seat with her gaze. Whipped and trained. Riku had to fight the impulse to hang his head a little. But she wasn't done, she was talking all the while and he sucked it up and listened because taking a verbal lashing was what he needed and the more it was drilled into him the worse he felt about himself and that was exactly what he wanted.

He had a plan and he needed words like Kairi's-- like Mayako's-- to carry it through.

"Like every stupid child your age who thinks they mean something. Many people are born in a day, Riku. Just as many die. And almost all of them will never have anything to do with you."

"I saw the papers, Mayako!" It was a last ditch effort at breaking through and it fell completely flat. Mayako remained intact and Riku remained horribly, painfully wrong. _I saw the papers._

"And I saw the body." Mayako shook her head and turned to leave. "Just this once. Please don't argue with me. Just this _once_."

x x x

It was late that evening when Riku heard the voices coming from his aunt's bedroom.

"How did he find out? Why does he--?"

"It's not his fault, Maya. It hasn't been easy..."

"I've been trying..."

"And I know you have-- I know you have..."

"He... died."

"No, no, he's fine, he's fine."

"_He's_ dead and **he's** dying and..."

"He's not dying. He's not going to die, May."

"He _wants_ to! You've _heard_ him, he--"

"Shh..."

"...on _purpose_, he..."

"Shhh..."

Riku backed silently into the darker recesses of the hallway and there he stayed for several minutes, just waiting, just watching. There was a small gap where the door hadn't closed entirely, giving him a three inch wide view of the room inside. His aunt wasn't crying-- at least, no type of crying Riku was used to. When most people cried, there was a shaky sort of breath, some gasp for air, some hint somewhere of an imbalance and the body's desperate attempt to cope, cope, cope and regain that stability it strived for. Yet Mayako made no sound. No jerky motions, no twitching limbs. She simply collapsed like a ragdoll shot in the head and spread out on the bed.

_How... morbid._

If he hadn't told himself to hate her, he might have told himself to love her right about then. Or if not to love her, to at least forgive her, to accept her, to embrace her as a part of his family, if nothing else. But, as is usually the case, acceptance was the road less travelled and Riku didn't feel up to navigating his way through anything he didn't know or understand. Hate was easy. Hate won out.

Riku backed down the hallway, eased into the guest room, and closed the door behind him, alone in the dark. Outside the window the streetlights were shining, a moth or two occasionally swinging beneath the yellow beams, towards their blinding, artificial sun. The cardboard boxes were still stacked solemnly in the corners. They still cast their shadows on the wall and still effectively blocked out the closet and its army of cheerful stick figures Sora had...

_Sora..._

Riku crawled over towards the desk where his cell phone lay, innocent and dumb as all electronics are. And somewhere, Sora's cell phone rang. ...And rang... and rang again. Yet if Riku was nothing else, he was at least persistant. He knew Sora was avoiding him. He somehow knew the kid was probably sitting just within hand's reach of the damn thing, watching the name pop up on the screen: 'Riku,' 'Riku,' 'Riku.' Over and over again. But Riku could outdo Sora. He knew he could.

And somewhere around the eleventh unanswered call, he did. The ringing ceased-- all noise ceased-- and Riku's call was answered with a very audible silence on the other end.

"Sora? ...Sora, if you're there, say something."

"...Sorry, Riku." Riku didn't know exactly what the sorry was for, really. Sorry for not answering? Sorry for not being at the hospital with him? Sorry for what? But he didn't ask. Didn't have to ask. His first concern was keeping Sora on the line now that he had him.

"Okay. Okay, don't hang up. Please, just don't hang up."

"Why?"

"Why? _Why_? Because I..." _Because I need to hear your voice so I can feel mentally stable again. That's fucking why._ "I want to-- I _need_ to talk to you."

"Look, Riku, it's my fault th--"

"Just shut up, okay? Don't go pinning the blame of this on yourself, alright?" There was no response for a moment and Riku feared the worst-- feared Sora turning away in frustration, disgust. Anything. Turning away and not turning back. Turning the phone off and not turning it back on. "Alright?" Riku pressed. There was a sigh of static through the phone and Riku slouched in relief. Sora was still there.

"No, it's _not_ alright, Riku. You could be **dead**. Don't you even get that? You were _this_ close, man. And it's my--"

"It's _my_ fault, Sora. For the love of _God_. Let me be responsible for my _own_ fucked-up actions, okay?"

Sora was silent again, but Riku no longer feared the other boy leaving. If what Kairi said had any sort of merit to it whatsoever, leaving what was Sora was apt to do in a situation like that. And whoever it was he was leaving was just expected to take it and let go, just like that. But Riku flat out refused.

"Riku, you wouldn't have done it if I hadn't suggested it," Sora murmured.

_That's what Kairi said. That it was Sora's fault there. That he put the idea into my head._ "...Did Kairi tell you that?" Riku asked. He tried to keep the bitterness out of his voice, but it crept in anyway. Whatever control he had over the situation clearly just didn't extend to his own vocal cords.

"_No_, Riku! **_I_** told her that, okay? If anyone _doesn't_ deserve blame here, it's Kairi. She didn't even know."

"I'm sorry."

"I thought you liked her..."

"I _do_. Kairi's a good kid, just..." _She's always perfect and I'm always just fucked up. She's always smart and I'm always a moron. She can do no wrong by you, Sora. Can she?_ "I don't know."

"You're on edge. I get it."

"I really don't think you do."

"...No. Guess not."

"Sora..."

Riku thought he could hear a squeak of bedsprings through the phone, though it may very well have been his imagination. His imagination... He imagined Sora right there, in a dark room much like Riku was at that moment. Sora would be standing up from the bed, one hand buried in his hair, the other one holding the phone to his ear. Maybe he would pause to look towards the window. Maybe he would stop to think about Riku and what Riku was doing right then, completely unaware that it was so similar to the picture he himself was standing in the middle of.

"I'm tired, so I'm gonna go to bed, okay?"

"Uh, no, _not_ okay. Are you mad at me or something?"

"No, Riku, I'm not... I'm not mad at you."

"Well then what is it? I'm trying to convince you you're guilt-free and you're kicking me in the face for it."

"I don't mean to."

"Well then don't. That easy." Riku sighed. "People are responsible for their own actions, Sora. Okay? **I** skipped out on the pills. That was **my** decision. Not yours."

There was not pause then. Sora either imploded or exploded-- which it was, Riku wasn't quite sure. But the words ripped out of Sora's mouth and across into Riku's ear with a vengeance, Sora's tone some sort of a plea, a hiss, and a roar all rolled into one. "Well if _that's_ the case," he said, "then why the _hell_ did you do it, Riku? Do you know how much trouble you almost walked into? How much trouble you _did_ walk into, even-- May _flipped_, Riku! We _all_ did. I mean... Do you really want to die so bad?"

"Would everyone just stop saying that, already? No, I don't want to die, okay?"

"Then what are you doing with yourself, Riku? Huh?"

_"'Riku Wataya, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?' And you don't say anything for a good long while, but when you finally do, you tell him you've got nothing, no plans, no--"_

"...I dunno."

"Well figure it out. Because I don't want to care this much about someone who's just going to die on me."

"_Jesus_, Sora! We're _all_ going to _die_, okay?"

"But not now! Not when you're seventeen! Not when you can prevent it!"

"Look, Sora. You wanted to take all the blame earlier-- I wouldn't let you. Well now I need you to at least take some of it, okay? Yeah, it was your idea. Yeah, I was the one who purposely ditched the pills. But it was something we screwed up together, okay? Me more than you, but you were _there_ and you _knew_..."

"Then maybe I don't want to help you screw up your life anymore."

"Sora, you're--" -_-one of the few things that makes me want to keep my life from being more screwed up in the first place? You're the thing that makes my life seem not so screwed up?_ Riku couldn't get it out. Whatever it was was stuck in his throat, and stuck in his throat it remained. The phone clicked off into silence and Riku was left sitting on the guest room floor, trying to get past the fact that sweet and beautiful little Sora had just hung up on him.

And now all he felt like doing was curling up and crying like a sick little baby. Or if the tears wouldn't come, dry heaving. He'd take what he could get, just as long as it was some sort of pathetic physical expression of his own self-pity.

"...Fuck. Just... _fuck_."

His hands were rifling through boxes, throwing their contents down and out, moving in and out, stopping and starting and pulling and grabbing and pinching and twisting. Seeking quite shamelessly and turning the entire room into some sort of twisted minefield, all under the watchful eyes of the the girls and boys in their annorexic stick figure bodies pinned up to the closet door.

On the desk were the medical papers. The photo album. And then, with a slam, a bang, and a skid-- a yearbook. Sophomore year. The last yearbook he received. One year old. There was no junior yearbook.

Breathing heavily, Riku allowed himself to stop. He let himself take it in, let himself think it-- think_ Good God, have I sunk this low? Gotta look back through... gotta... just to..._

Look back through something that doesn't even apply. Reaffirm your own existence by tracing pen and reading words. Just to believe that somewhere along the line of time, there was a knot for you, for someone cared enough to write you. To write you this-- the eccentric red-headed wonder with the overactive lighter-- write:

_Well, jeepers, babe, I really can't put it into words the way I feel, but I'm sure you know by now. Enough deepness. Hope you..._

The crazy guitarist boy with his off-key lilt and his string-calloused fingertips-- to write--

_--sure happy I got ranked up there in the "major league" of your heart, because you just got put in the hall of fame in mine! Note: To the next 'major leaguer,' whoever you may be, take care of my darlin' or I will be hurtin' somebody!_

How weird, then, to have the home-running boy come up short. Yes indeed, when Riku's mad, mad search and read came to a close, it was not at the end of the yearbook. It was in the middle. It was in the dead center, over a message scrawled across a picture of the blitzball team. Two faces were circled in the team of twelve-- two little shadowed faces Sharpied up and tailed with dotted lines towards the message...

_Riku-- Keep your shit together this summer and let's screw the people who don't like you for you. All the things I should have said, I probably haven't said. Sorry. Keep it good. Stay gold..._

The rest was scratched out.

That night, Riku dreamt for the first time in what honestly felt like ages. Since the death of his parents, his sleep had been shallow and nearly endless, the mental shore of a mental beach-- making up a mentality not his own. But after hearing his aunt's hysterics in the other room, something had clicked, something had switched, and Riku was thrown headlong into the deep end of dreams and slumber without a surface.

Riku stood on the branch of a tall tree, distorted by his sleeping mind and stretched to the size of a small skyscraper, standing strong in the middle of an ocean. Encircling the tree and bobbing up and down in the water was a chain of wooden carts, each covered with a brightly patterned tarp of some sort-- caravans, it seemed. They were pushed around in a circle at a sluggish rate, propelled on only by the current of the ocean they sat and swung in.

Then, from somewhere beyond the circle and beneath the water came a shadow. It slithered around beneath the water's surface a moment, Riku still peering curiously down at it from the safety of his one-tree-haven. The shadow vanished for a split second, only to reemerge above water as a very curious looking creature indeed, sporting fins and claws and scales-- some sort of demented sea monster that was then scrambling up the side of a caravan only to perch on the top.

And it was then that Riku picked up on them. The features. The green eyes. The silver hair.

Riku smiled up at himself and cocked his narrow, scale-fleck face to one side.

"'What do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?'" he asked. "Gonna become a rock star? A big shot? A nobody? Gonna take it or let it roll-- your head or your life? Cut if off a little bit? What do you plan to do, Riku? Do, do, what do you plan, plan to do?"

Riku never did hear his own response. If he gave one, it was lost somewhere between the two fogs of slumber and wakefulness and it would never be recovered.

Riku didn't care. The Riku on the tree, at least. But the Riku of fins and fishes cared very much and slunk back into the watery depths of some subconscious as a troubled little figment of someone's imagination. That and nothing more.

x x x

There was a thick smudge of red somewhere in his vision-- a bloodstain, he thought. S_ome weird kind of leftovers of myself._ _And this whole thing is just some out-of-body experience, maybe. A prelude to death. _ But rather than blurring and shrinking away as the image well should have in Riku's mind, it merely sharpened. Intensified. As the picture grew in definition, so did Riku's awareness of the one prevailing fact: _ I'm not dead. I'm _not_ dead._

He was aware of the flimsy cast encasing his arm. Aware of the light filtering through the open window. And, as he came around in that groggy way which every teenage boy comes around in the morning, he was aware of the voice ringing between in ears and around his brain.

"G'morning, sleepyhead." ..._Kairi_.

"This feels familiar."

"You've got company, Riku."

"I don't think you count as company anymore. You basically live here anyway."

"It's not me, silly."

He was aware of the sudden jolt, the sudden silence, and finally, the sudden appearance of the sullen little blonde in the doorway. Arms crossed, back against the frame, one knee bent, the other locked in place.

"Hey, Riku."

"...Roxas."

(x) (x) (x)

If you think this story is going to be nothing but angst in light of this recent chapter, I would urge you to pay closer attention to Riku's reactions to things. XD

I'll be out of town for a few days, but I wanted to get this up before I leave. Hope you enjoyed!


	7. Downbound Poemwound

**Suburbia**

'Down-bound Poem-wound'

Perhaps Riku should have been angrier than he really was. No doubt he was angry-- upset on some level, at the very least-- that Roxas had shown up just like that. And no doubt he was angry-- upset on some level, at the very least-- that Kairi had gone and called him in the first place, notifying the guy of Riku's none-too-coincidental collapse that rode up alongside his medical disobedience.

Retribution didn't end with confrontation between Riku and Kairi or Riku and Mayako even. No, apparently it even stretched to Roxas, now. Riku felt like kicking himself in the ass. And he was still half asleep. He dreaded his future... wakeful... wrathful kind of self.

And so, as it came to pass, Riku and Roxas stared at one another rather awkwardly for a few good moments before Kairi had sense enough to usher them all outside the guest room and downstairs where she promised they could all talk it over with breakfast. The idea was no longer strange to Riku-- Mayako was gone and Kairi was a fill-in housewife. To escape the blow _Roxas_ put in his daily routine, Riku sought some kind of solace out in the backyard, away from both him and Kairi. Out there on the porch, though, was a greenhouse hellhole and a sweltering heat that only made Riku more tired, more drawn out.

...More passive than aggressive when he heard the door slide open and heard the sound of sneakers on the wood.

Roxas stepped out onto the verdana, hands in his pockets and head tilted back. The morning crickets killed the awkwardness because they filled the gap and screamed loud in a way so you knew it would fade soon-- crickets don't have much for endurance. So maybe it was because of the crickets that Riku only waited a brief moment before patting the seat next to him. Roxas sat down, the plastic squeaking slightly in some futile attempt at protest, and then quiet was left to the crickets once more.

"Do you know any Indian poetry?" Riku eventually asked.

"No. Why?"

"No reason," he said. "it's just nice, sometimes, to hear."

Casting the guy a sideways kind of look, Roxas nudged Riku in the shoulder gently. His sleepy look was kind of disturbing and Roxas didn't quite trust Riku not to pass out all over him. So, thinking conversation would keep him alive and awake, Roxas asked, "Do you remember frosh year? Our history class we had together?"

"Yeah."

"And do you remember how the teacher... he... he had this habit of giving us all nicknames? I remember yours."

"Heh, well, the names don't _mean_ anything."

"Are you so sure? 'Voice of reason--'"

"'--in a sea of confusion.'"

Riku had taken a course in European history before he'd studied world history overall. Because of that, he'd been crammed in a class with mostly run-of-the-mill sophomore kids who thought they were hot shit and who thought Riku was an ignorant asshole to be a junior and be taking World History II. To them he flipped to bird-- fuck all of them, he figured-- all of them except Roxas. Roxas was one of the few select sophomores who could pull off maturity and still be a good time.

Surprisingly enough, their teacher had seen this, picked up on this, and had them seated side by side for the entire year. A good teacher he'd been, Riku remembered. A bit eccentric. A bit out there. "For the good of the order," he'd said, "we're going to discuss current events today!" And very little learning would actually get done until the superintendent of something-or-other came in to see what an extraordinary job his teachers were doing.

It was all an over-the-top act that Riku and Roxas were all too happy to participate in. _ "Riku, you're the voice of reason in a sea of confusion!" _he'd said. _"Yes, Riku-- my voice of reason in a sea of confusion-- what is your answer to the question?"_

"It's not supposed to be taken seriously, Roxas. The nicknames, I mean." He snorted a laugh, considered whacking Roxas on the back of the head, but then decided that it would seem too friendly, too nice for what they had become. "Dork," he just said, and left it at that. And when Roxas had nothing to say to that, Riku let it go dead quiet for all of five minutes before asking, "Why are you here?"

"Naminé asked me to come."

"Why didn't she just do it herself?"

"She can't. Her parents had her enrolled in this-- this summer art... institution thing. It's a university program. She couldn't leave."

"So you listen to everything she tells you to do now?"

"She was worried."

"Well you weren't worried when I was back home."

"Riku--"

"Shut up."

Roxas eyed Riku was a gaze Riku would like to have labeled thoughtful. Both eyebrows arched in the expression, one raised just slightly high than the other so it skirted the fray of bangs there. And his face hovered like that for a moment-- 'hovered' out of instability and not much else-- before returning to its usual indifference. "Well," he said. "You're wrong. I did worry."

Riku's first impulse was to bristle, insulted somehow. His second was to smack the impassiveness off Roxas' face, and his third-- the impulse he _finally_ settled on-- was merely to do nothing at all. If Roxas had come seeking salvation, forgiveness in its highest form (the forgiveness only _Riku_, surely, could offer)...

"Man, and here I was expecting something."

Riku blinked. Roxas rose to his feet. And though Riku wanted to hold back the words he instantly knew sounded childish, they'd up and tumbled out before he could stop them, a furious little torrent of: "What the hell's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Whatever you want it to," Roxas said. He then seemed to think better of it and moved to revise his words with a shrug of his shoulders. "If you still want to think the world is out to get you, even _after_ all this, I'm not gonna be the one to stop you. I'm just not... _qualified_, you know? I mean, you already know that, Riku." Roxas' sigh came expectedly-- Riku had had a thousand serious conversations with the kid before. It just so happened that this one had a slightly different feel to it. One that seem to imply that it might actually avoid the crash-and-explode ending that tended to take their 'serious talks' up to the level of full-blown arguments.

The blonde was toeing the ground and Riku was wondering if he could interrupt. It seemed like Roxas had more to say, but Riku wasn't entirely sure if he wanted to hear it. The likelihood that it would make him feel better was slim, at best. Still, he couldn't think of anything to interrupt with that wouldn't be lame ("Look over there, Roxas. A pig on a pogo-stick.") and so he was simply thrown backwards into a silence that broke underneath him when Roxas got his words together and made another dogged attempt at conveying a point.

"I'm not here to change you," he said. "I never could. I'm here because there's a whole sea of people you don't believe in-- with feelings for you that you don't believe in... Yeah." Roxas sighed. "And all these people you don't believe in," he said, "elected me to make sure you're alive and well. As well as you can be, you know."

"...If that was your attempt at a joke..?"

"Yeah."

"It was pretty lame."

"Hey, I'm the observer, not the comedian."

"You never did have a good sense of humor..." Riku said it like it was read from a textbook, a grain of information to be stowed away, to be learned and relearned and engraved into the walls and layers of his brain. 'You will be tested on this,' it told him. And then there it was, a flash of insight or a mental spit-up-- Riku didn't know.

"There was this place we all used to go to after school..." he said slowly. "It was back when we were kids. There was this dock in the sand where the water had receded. And we must have been six or something and we were playing hide and seek."

"And I hid under the dock and you couldn't find me."

Riku laughed, but it sounded too dry and too forced to really pull a smile from Roxas. His own mouth twitched at the thought, at the pathetic hopelessness of the who damn thing. "I thought you'd abandoned me or something," he said. "Or you were playing a joke."

x x x

_"Roxas! Roxas, come on! Where are you? ...It isn't... it isn't **funny** anymore, Roxas!"_

_Little kid Riku with his hands all in fists, he doubled over on himself and his knees his the dock and--_ mother, _but he could feel the wood snap and prickle and his skin. And there was something behind his eyes and it was hurting and there was dirt beneath his nails, he knew, but he couldn't see them anymore. His nails, no more, his hands, no more. He couldn't damn well see anything anymore and he was so small and so stupid that he couldn't even begin to understand the concept of crying real tears of a real loss._

_Roxas was a real loss. At that one instant the boy was a thousand and one corpses in a thousand and one scattered locations among the island and the sea, perhaps even one in the air in which Roxas' world was believed to have suddenly and inexplicably inverted and gravity was certainly pulling him up-- only him, only him-- and he was falling up and would never come down because he was moving towards the gravity of the sun and even little kid Riku knew that the sun was far, far away and if you went into the sun you would never come back, just like that man lost his son to the sun._

"If your father's name is Dedalus, how can you be Icarus?"

_If you go too close to things too bright, you die, you die. And Riku panicked and understood this and cried and heaved and couldn't stop. He couldn't stop picturing Roxas dead, Roxas dying, Roxas falling up towards the end._

_"Roxas!"_

x x x

"You cried."

"Shut up."

"You know I didn't abandon you, Riku. It was just a game."

"Just shut _up_, okay?"

And for all of a split second, it looked as though Roxas had decided to do just that. He still towered over Riku-- something that was ironic in itself, since the younger boy was usually so short beside him. But then Roxas was talking and Riku could think of nothing better to do than to listen. He started off softly, like speaking to a child, a child with a disability of some sort, a child whose mother would sigh, would apologize, would cup one hand to the side of her face and whisper, "It's not his fault, the poor dear, he just doesn't understand..."

"We never abandoned you, Riku. I never abandoned you. I just didn't know--" But _God_, how Riku wanted to shake him, to scream--

"You **still** don't know! You don't know anything! You don't _understand_ what it's like and you don't _understand_ that this isn't something you get over. And it affects _everything_, Roxas. People learn you're sick, you're sad, you're a fucking _orphan_ and they go soft, Roxas! They go so damn _soft_ it's like they're rotten! Like they're fucking _rotten_ and you don't _get_ that, Roxas, okay? You don't _get_ that."

Riku's chest was heaving, but if there was a pain there, he couldn't feel it and by that point he would've damned every doctor to hell and back again. He wasn't trying to kill himself, for crying out loud, he just wanted to be heard, to have his words hold some significance other than that of a dumb little teenage boy in a cotton candy shit-hole.

"No one has treated me the same," he said. "They're cloyingly _fucking_ sweet, they're forcibly oblivious, they're anything _but_ the way they were before." _The old Roxas would never have come. The old Naminé would've trusted me to take care of it. The old Mayako wouldn't have care. No one used to give a shit and now they do and now it hurts. _"They're anything... but the way they were before," Riku said again, stupidly.

"And you just want things to go back to the way they were," Roxas said.

And Riku's mouth was open in a flash, anger with a NO on the tip of his tongue, but... that was where it stayed. _ Is it really that simple?_ The truth of the matter? Yes. It was really, truly, just that simple. All of it amounted to change, the change that resulted from the death of his parents, the change of the move, the change of the people, the tone, the feel of the world. It was dulled down-- with or without medication-- and there was no other way for Riku to express that.

All Riku wanted was for things to go back to being the way they were.

And yet if he could dig up the graves, roll back the wheel, return the corn dog and lie back in his bed-- if he could look at his mother and say "How about tomorrow, if we go to the faire tomorrow, not today? What do you say?" And if she would say yes and if she would be okay... It would still never amount to being what it was. Riku knew too much now. And it was with some sort of fascinated horror that he realized he was then crying right there in front of Roxas. Not heaving or gasping or shaking or trembling, but simply leaking out his eyes.

"Riku..."

"**What**." _Go on, fucker. I dare you to bring it up._

But Roxas didn't. He just frowned a little, shrugged a little, and said, "Nothing."

Riku stalked angrily back into the house, Roxas sighing and following along behind. Kairi was in the kitchen making pancakes. "Pancakes," she informed Riku, "will cheer you up right away!" And as Riku practically threw his pajama-clad body on the island stool, the only half-civil words he could think of saying to Kairi were:

"Kairi, your shirt's on backwards."

"It looks the same both ways," Kairi said.

"Well, yeah, but this way it has a tag and the other way it doesn't," Roxas said. Thinking Roxas was trying to suddenly agree with him in some pathetic attempt of being all buddy-buddy, Riku threw the kid an angry-as-all-hell glare before sliding off the stool and flinging open the fridge. Two sodas in hand, he gave one to Kairi and kept the other for himself, ignoring Roxas' blank stare as he glugged down carbonation like nobody's business.

Meanwhile, Kairi sipped her Fresca obediently, flipping pancakes and listening to the painfully noticeable silence behind her. Flip, flip, flip, flip. Four pancakes on a plate and over the plate went to the island counter. Riku pulled the plate over in front of him and reached for the happy little stack-- only to be suddenly stopped by a stab-attack from a certain someone with a spatula.

"_OWW_. What the fuck, Kairi?"

"Share."

Kairi went back to flipping pancakes. Riku went back to wishing wrath on everyone's head. And Roxas... ate a pancake in silence.

"You know, every time I drink soda, I want to puke," Kairi said.

"So don't _drink_ it," Riku snapped. And maybe he would've continued, would've tacked on some thought about how maybe if she puked enough she'd be skinny enough to even wear pajama pants Riku would _never_ be able to fit into... maybe he would've said it if it hadn't sounded so lame. Or if Kairi hadn't suddenly gone silent herself, her back to the boys and the pancakes behind her, frozen over the stove and listening to the sizzle and burn of the batter on pan.

"...Kairi?"

"Sora's not speaking to me." _Bam_. Back in motion, Kairi flip-flip-flipped the pancakes and drummed her nails against the countertop. "I went to see him yesterday at the bookstore, but Cid said he quit." Flip, flip, flip-flip-flip. "Why would he stop working at the bookstore, Riku? He loves the bookstore... All those stupid books." Another plateful of pancakes and Kairi turned off the stove and nearly shattered the plate when it came crashing down on the little island top.

"It's just..." And when the tears started coming, Riku was ready for them, on his feet and looking pointedly at Roxas, waiting _pointedly_ for Roxas to leave.

"Roxas."

"I'll be... walking. Or something."

"Or _something_."

And so the friend of the son of the two dead folk which started the whole mess-- that _friend_, that sex buddy of _yore_, that pal of _olde_-- he set out on a journey into a world he didn't know. He set out oblivious to the neighborhood and its perfection and Riku's displacement and Kairi's resentment and Sora's absence. For, in fact, Roxas set out to find Sora. He wasn't sure how the idea had wriggled its way on into his blonde brain, but once the thought struck him, he knew there was no other option. He remained oblivious to Riku's displacement and Kairi's resentment, but Sora's absence he understood all too well.

Remarkably enough, Roxas was not only blessed with a gutsy gusto for this sort of search-and-rescue mission, but he was also blessed with a keen and observational sort of memory. _"Why would he stop working at the bookstore, Riku? He loves the bookstore."_

He rounded the corner, he ambled, meandered, and drew his way around the suburbs. He got lost, got found, asked for directions and eventually found himself in strip mall wasteland that housed his little destination. _ If I'm going to find Sora, he thought, this must be a good place to start, right?_

It turns out Roxas might very well have been wrong, but none of us will ever really know seeing as-- while the going was rough and tough and rumbled and rolled-- Roxas did eventually get what he needed. He did find out where Sora was. But for your own personal amusement and for the proper documentation of the story at hand, we'll include the deep and dark details of Roxas' Infamous Encounter With The Used Bookstore Man-- i.e. Cid.

"Um. Excuse me."

"Huh?"

"Do... do you by any chance know where I can find Sora?" Roxas asked.

"What the hell do I look like? A fuckin' mapmaker?" said Cid.

"Um," said Roxas.

"And what the _hell_ makes you think I know where some kid wastes his life away?"

"Um," Roxas said again. He swallowed thickly and tried to square his jaw, but he wasn't entirely sure how to go about doing that, so instead he just opted for standing a little straighter. He said, "I was told he worked here and I need to find him..." Deciding this sounded a bit lame, Roxas tacked on, "It's important," for good measure.

"Well I can't give you his address, kid, but I can tell you where he lives." Roxas blinked. He wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that.

"Uh. Okay," was as far as he could get.

"You go back to the intersection at the top of the hill and take a left across the street, then you go downhill until you reach the spot where the guardrail pops up alongside the road. Five blocks past that is Honeytree, and one after Honeytree is Wooden Spoon, and if you take a right on Wooden Spoon, you're at the goddamn rec center and you've gone too far. So take a _left_ on Wooden Spoon, go down the third cul-de-sac on your right, and then into the private cul-de-sac after that one. Sora lives in the goddamn blue house."

Roxas blinked. He knew what the answer was before he asked his question, but he felt he had to ask anyway, just to be sure.

"Could you possibly write that down?"

"Hell no. Now unless you're gonna buy a goddamn book or something, I'd suggest leaving."

"Look, I'll buy _ten_ books if you can just write it down for me."

Cid frowned and the toothpick in his mouth snapped clean in two. Or rather, not so clean perhaps-- Cid's shouted "FUCK!" was a bit too loud for there to not be splinters involved. "Fine, ya fuckin' brat. Five hardbacks, five paperbacks. You got two minutes."

For all that the bookstore looked ratty and unkempt, Roxas had at least figured out how the place stayed in business. Cid must have terrified every single customer into buying out whatever didn't sell. _But two minutes might be enough to at least get one stupid thing I'll read_, Roxas figured. While Cid sketched out his bizarre directions on a half crumpled (and most likely used) McDonald's napkin, Roxas roamed the aisles piled high with books, fingertips trailing along cracked, bent, and occasionally busted and torn spines. Towards the back there were cardboard boxes overflowing with still more books-- a residue of Sora's departure, Roxas figured.

Eventually he settled with some random interesting titles mixed in with the teenage basics-- some cult classic medley of Heller, Salinger, and-- yes, Kerouac. Perhaps there was a tingle in the pages of _On The Road_ that pulled the kid to it, some kind of passionate magic-in-the-making left over from Sora's all too eager fingertips which had no doubt fondled the hell out of the thing. Kerouac's beatnik bible and Roxas remained clueless as ever. He'd read the guy's poetry, read the guy's biography, read about the guy in history class, for crying out loud. And sure, he'd read _On The Road_ before, but he'd lost his copy on a late night bus, lost his senses along with it and never had the foggiest idea of the importance of that book.

Few people have an even slightly _un_foggy idea of the importance of that book, so really, no one should frown on Roxas. Fate favored the kid and he bought the book all the same.

"You took ten fuckin' minutes," Cid snapped.

"Sorry," Roxas mumbled.

Attacking the bar code scanner with a sort of vengeance Roxas had once thought only existed in rabid axe murderers, Cid eyeballed the books as they passed through his hands. Whether he was being critical or simply ensuring that he entered ever number correctly in order to get the perfect profit-- well, Roxas didn't know. But Cid most certainly _did_ take a pause when the book following _Catch-22 _proudly read--

"_Mr. Muo's Traveling Couch_."

"...It sounded interesting."

"Your money, kid. Not mine."

"Thanks." In exchange for a ten, four ones, and a nickel, Roxas received ten books and a napkin. It all balanced out quite well, really. And yet as he turned to leave, made it to the door and was just about to nudge it on open, Roxas heard from behind the gruff and bitter voice.

"Hey!" Cid shouted. "If you find the kid, uh..." Roxas waited. Cid went quiet. He changed his mind and shook his head and shrugged his shoulders and bit a toothpick through anew. "Ah, nevermind," he muttered.

And Roxas left.

By this point in time he was feeling like quite the world-traveler, but like all world-travelers, the feeling of being beat down and wrung out was really starting to weigh pretty heavily on him. He was a bagman bumbling along streets foreign to him-- _Where's the sand? Where're the waves? The boardwalk? The beach bums? Bums period-- for God's sake. Is everyone here a sleek beltway bandit or does the world really, truly, and honestly revolve around them?_ More than that, had Riku thought the same thoughts before Roxas?

No, Roxas figured. Riku would never think things like that. Not Roxas' Riku. Roxas' Riku was too self-centered. Roxas' Riku didn't know how to care-- not about himself and sure as hell not about anyone else.

A honey tree and a wooden spoon later, Roxas was standing outside a blue house, bagful of books in each hand. He wrestled one fingertip towards the button beside the door, pressed it in, and stood back to wait. Really, Sora's house wasn't all that special looking. Two stories, nine windows, single car garage. The symmetry of the lawn was unappealing, the greenness of the grass pointed towards the artificial side, and Roxas simply found the entire structure and its surroundings to be annoyingly _under_-bearing.

It bothered Roxas because it was so normal. He'd been expecting more of a climax. He'd been wanting more of a climax. His journey and his mission called for more of a climax.

And then the door swung open and he instantly forgot whatever he'd been thinking because he was staring at the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen in his life and she was smiling at him and making him want to giggle.

"H-Hi." He coughed, he choked. Maybe they were giggles in disguise. That was an unnerving thought.

The woman before him smiled and when she tilted her head her neck reminded Roxas of a swan's neck-- this beautiful, long, white thing that was so curved, so stretched, so perfect that he just wanted to wrap both hands around it and see how soft it felt.

Roxas was a weird kid.

And the woman was talking to him and it took him a moment to process her soft little "Hello?"

"Uh... is... Sora here?" he asked.

She smiled and a tiny pair of crow's feet stretched from each green eye and Roxas wanted to giggle again so he coughed-- then realized he didn't have a hand to cough into and decided to do nothing for the sake of politeness. "Who might you be?" the woman asked.

"I'm a friend of his." Screwing up his face, Roxas blinked. "O-of Riku's, actually. And... and Riku is a friend of his. Erm." The woman frowned and Roxas panicked. Her frown made him want to cry. "We just haven't seen him around lately and we were wondering if he was... sick."

Like a shot it was different and the woman was smiling again, her confusion and suspicions completely erased when an ounce of caring was brought into the matter. She stepped to the side and the movement made her skirt sway and brush against her legs and her arm stretched out and for a moment Roxas thought she was going to touch him and he always swung the bags of books around like some hell-crafted maces from the hell-library (which most certainly exists, yes). But she just crooned and caressed the air with this sweeping gesture, motioning Roxas in.

"How thoughtful!" she said. "Sora's upstairs-- come right on in, I'll go get him right away!" She turned and Roxas watched her walk towards the stairs. He decided that her beauty wasn't so much a sexy beauty so much as it was a lovable beauty. _That_, he thought to himself, _is the kind of beauty Naminé and Kairi'll have_. And again, he wondered if Riku had thought about that sort of thing-- the kind of beauty girls would grow up to have-- and he decided on a 'no' once more.

His Riku remained firmly homosexual and uncaring. Of course he would never think to care about an aging girl and her impeding beauty of whatever sort.

Roxas was a weird kid who didn't think too highly of his Riku.

"So-ra! A friend of yours is here!"

"A friend of a friend... really. Not... not exactly a..." But Sora was pounding on down the steps before Roxas could clear his name and he just stood there stupidly when the kid came into view. Mussed up hair and obscure-indie-band-tee, Sora stared very, very blankly at Roxas for a moment. "Hi..." Roxas offered lamely.

"Hey..." Sora said. The most beautiful woman on earth left the room all smiles and charm and elegance, her heels clicking softly against the hardwood. Roxas thought it might be a good icebreaker if he told Sora he had a beautiful mother, but then he thought about it again and decided that was probably more freaky than it was endearing.

A good way _not_ to make friends is to tell a guy their mom's hot.

"So, um. Riku..."

"Who are you?"

"Roxas."

"Uh huh."

"I'm a friend of Riku's."

"Riku doesn't have any friends."

"Except you and Kairi-- I know. But that's _here_. Not, not back..." Roxas sighed and cut himself off. He would talk himself in circles if he wasn't careful and there was something about the way Sora was studying him that was just more than a little unsettling. "Look," he said. "Can we just... _level_ or something?"

"Level?"

"About Riku."

"Level about Riku."

"Yes, level about Riku. We need to talk, okay?"

"Okay, but I don't know who you are."

"I'm _Roxas_."

"And a friend of Riku's, yeah, I got that part." Sora's head moved in that tilting manner of his mother's and he cocked his head. Roxas studied his neck silently while Sora asked, "But why're you _here_?"

Having decided that Sora's neck was more like that of an ostrich, Roxas decided that eye contact would probably be a good idea for that conversation and he pulled his own eyes back to Sora's famous baby-blues. Maybe it was the ostrich neck or the intensity of those eyes-- Roxas wasn't sure. But suddenly he didn't feel warm, he didn't feel fuzzy. He felt desperate and cold and the initial rush of determination he'd felt at the beginning of his mission came flooding back in.

"From what I gather," Roxas said, "you're the kid who gave Riku the goddamn _brilliant_ idea of stopping his meds in the hopes he'd get better. What kind of common sense it takes to reach _that_ kind of conclusion-- I don't know. But if you could just really try to follow me for, like, twenty seconds..."

"Umm...?"

"I'm Roxas, okay? _Roxas_. And _you_ are Sora. I've known Riku for as _long_ as I can remember. Until he met you, Riku would've never been the kinda kid to not pop the pills he was told to pop."

"I know..."

"And... and that's not saying it's your fault, it's just..." Roxas sighed. "Man. This is hard."

"Well, it might help if you told me what you were trying to say first, then said it."

"That doesn't even makes sense. Once I told you what I was trying to say, that would mean I'd already... Okay, forget that. Look, Sora. I just..." Sora had been moving while Roxas had been talking, and Roxas suddenly found himself outside Sora's front door, the boy beside him guiding them down the stoop, down the walkway, back towards the street-sides. Roxas followed because Roxas didn't know what else to do-- not to mention he was hardly done talking with Sora. So he spewed at the words as they came, matching stride with Sora and trying to mentally tell the boy that he was not afraid-- that for all that Roxas had his countless issues with Riku's character, no one fucked with his first and got away with it.

"Riku's already blocked us out of his life," Roxas explained. He thought he saw Sora nod, but he wasn't too sure. "As long as he _has_ a life--" Roxas continued, "--that's one thing. But I don't want to be forced out of his life just because there's no life left. Or..."

"I know, I know, and I'm sorry, okay?"

"So why aren't you supporting Riku? How come you're bottled up in your house with your mother as a guard dog, for crying out loud?" Furrowing his brows, Roxas hurriedly added, "Not... not that I'm calling your mother a dog..."

"How long was your flight?" Sora asked.

"Long," Roxas said.

"Jet-lagged much?"

"_Much_."

Sora led them along a winding road-- one Roxas didn't catch the name of because he'd been too busy taking in other things to notice street signs. Really, it would've been easy for Sora to cackle maniacally and run away, leaving Roxas lost and alone and defenseless against the suburban atmosphere. But somehow, Roxas didn't think to worry about this. It wasn't that the thought didn't occur to him, it was just that the thought chose not to linger. Sora, he believed, was not a guy likely to leave a guy like Roxas in the middle of nowhere to die.

Roxas' assumption was only confirmed as he watched Sora's face scrunch and fall into this contemplative sort of thing-- brows furrowed, lips puckered, teeth biting anxiously at the flesh inside his mouth. The summer sun was starting to draw out just the tiniest beads of sweat from the boy and they gathered around his eyes and around his temples.

"I don't know how to help Riku," he confessed. "If it was my fault in the first place... No, it's like... These things that upset Riku... and set him off... and make him so unhappy he could _die_. I..." Sora let the words fall away, but his message was still clear and real as anything hanging in the air. _Those things that set him off, that upset him so, that get him so goddamn worked up and deadly-- what if I'm one of them? What if I **become** one of them?_

"Dirty," Roxas said. Sora blinked.

"Huh?"

"Your water here's dirty."

The sidewalk had bent and led them around another patch of guardrail, just hanging above a rather sad looking creek that appeared to contain more sludge than actual water. Dead leaves drifted lamely along the surface and a rather peculiar stench wafted slowly upwards in the summer heat, some sort of combination of dead rodents and cow manure. Sora smiled.

"Yeah," he said. "People fertilize their lawns and the fertilizer messes up the water."

"Okay."

Roxas moved to sit on the rail, under the shade of some bizarre kind of overhanging tree. Sora couldn't object-- it was damn hot outside just like it had been every other day of summer. The sky was cloudless-- no rain would save them that day. And he watched the heat making the road shimmer and he thought about what Roxas had just said--"Okay"-- and thought about what a stupid response that was to such an insightful piece of information.

If Roxas had half a brain, Sora figured, he would've gotten the meaning behind the statement. The over-fertilized suburbs stinking up the creek-bed.

"Did... did anyone ever tell you about the rocks?" Sora asked.

"...The rocks."

"And... you know, it's like... when you throw a rock in a creek, or in any water... you throw it in and for a while the surface goes all crazy around where it hit and there are ripples and little waves everywhere, right? And, and afterwards, like, a while after, the water's smooth again. But the rock's still there and the water'll never be the same." Roxas was staring down at the creek and listening to Sora talk. He was registering every word the boy said and trying to process it in his mind, trying not to get distracted by the way the thick water seemed to ooze around its own rocks and pebbles hidden under the surface.

"Did anyone ever tell you about that?" Sora prodded. And Roxas shook his head and watched the water, shook his head and watched the water.

"Well, someone has now."

"Are you one of those people who believes that everyone effects one anoth--"

"No, that's not what I'm saying." Sora's brows furrowed and his fingers clenched tighter against the rail, but Roxas saw and registered none of this because he was still staring at the water. "The things that happen to us stay with us, okay?" Sora said. "And me screwing up Riku-- that's going to stay with me. When you do something wrong-- when you step out of line-- you get punished. And if you don't get punished, you have to punish _yourself_ by _knowing_ you did something wrong and always reminding yourself of it and always... looking what you did and seeing how... How it was just stupid."

"Where did you hear the story about the rocks?" Roxas asked.

"Xena Warrior Princess."

"Really?"

"Yeah." Sora slumped a little and the quiet around them bore down and demanded a killing. He looked to the side and spied a familiar pair of bags, a familiar sight inside. "You went to my bookstore, too. Are you a stalker?"

"Probably. That's how I found out where you lived."

"You read Kerouac."

"Yeah."

"So why don't you understand?"

"Understand what? Understand _you_?"

"I don't know. You should just **understand**, it's like." Sora leaned down, pulled a book from the stack and attacked its pages with a well-rehearsed kind of vengeance. "It's like _here_," he said, jabbing a finger at the words beneath his hand.

"'Some'll go mad with numbers, some'll go mad with words, some'll pretend to lose reason, and lose reason anyway,'" Roxas read.

"Do you understand yet?"

"No." Ignoring Sora's sigh, Roxas swung both legs over the guard rail, bags of books forgotten on the sidewalk. "Here. C'mere," he said.

Sora blinked, obeyed, and found himself awkwardly tugged in front of Roxas, his back to the boy holding his shoulders and leaning just so in order to speak into his ear-- "Now look. You just stepped over the guard rail. There's nothing left keeping you from falling in that nasty creek. Do you want to really understand the rock story, Sora? _This_ is the rock story. You run into people in life and you affect them. You might not believe it. I do. You've affected Riku and you're affecting me right now. That down there is my soul. And this up here is you."

And with that, Roxas shoved. Hard.

Down Sora went, a tumbling wreck of squeaks and skin and brown to land in the muck and mire and filth of the creek. There was a sludge and a skitter where his hand fell through the water-- he was certain there was something living there-- ten thousand little somethings that panicked and fled when he landed on them like some bumbling hell-bound giant taking a step out of the sky. And for a moment he didn't know what to do because it felt like his eyes were rolling around their sockets all on their own accord and when he pulled them straight and back together, it was only to glare. But Sora couldn't glare all that well, so really, it was only to pout.

"Before you get angry, Sora," Roxas said, "I should tell you that poetry doesn't make you smart. It makes you look thoughtful and it makes you look creative, but what I need now is straightforward. And poetry is rarely straightforward." Sora hesitated, but finally looked up towards where Roxas stood, feet planted a shoulder-width apart, arms folded across his chest. "Tell me, Sora," he said. "Why are you afraid of Riku now?"

"He's like Hayner," Sora responded dumbly. Meekly. Roxas had him beat. Roxas had pushed him down. Sora was dirty and it was sophomore year all over again.

"Who's Hayner?" Roxas asked. Demanded. Roxas had him beat. Roxas knew it. Roxas was in charge and it was rare and it was powerful and he had to check himself to make sure he didn't bask in it and roll in it rather than use it to his advantage wisely. Wisely, wisely, that was key-- that thing was key as Sora opened his gaping hole of a mouth and no sound came out and-- _wisely_-- Roxas waited.

"He's just _like Hayner_, okay? He's... he's _better_ than Hayner, but I let Hayner--" Sora's mouth was screwed up into this twisted little frown and when he tried to force it out, he stumbled and bumbled and settled on a mumbled: "I... I screwed up, okay?"

"What _happened_ to Hayner, Sora?"

x x x

_Kairi smiled and slid a scrawny arm around Sora's shoulder. She listened to him cry and felt so pleasantly needed, so in demand that she stayed there the entire night. It wasn't evil or selfish. It was simply human. And she could tell from the pulse beneath his skin that it was her Sora was still there for, it was her he had anchored himself to so completely and so fully. Forget Hayner. Screw Hayner, she said. And maybe he said something, but it didn't even make sense to her at the time._

_He let you down, she whispered. It's okay, baby. Hey, hey, it's okay. _

_The next day, Sora was hit by a school-bus._

x x x

Sora didn't have the sense to move from the creek-bed as he talked to Roxas. It didn't click or register quite properly in his head that he was up to his knees in foul-smelling runoff water. He was just standing stupid and reciting the events of last year, events he'd pushed away so much that it felt like some sort of deja-vu, some sort of twisted dunk and splurge into a past life.

He spoke about his sophomore year. When Roxas and Riku had been palling around in World History, there, in another part of that world they studied so goddamn diligently, Sora was living up with the life he had and nearly getting that life smeared on the underside of on-coming traffic. Why? Sora told Roxas that, too. He told Roxas about Hayner, about Kairi, about the bus, the hospital, and the hell the high school had become thereafter. And when he was done he slumped back in the water, spent and tired and self-conscious beyond all belief.

"You probably really think I'm lame now, huh?"

"Nah. You're not lame."

"But how can you...?"

"You're just not. That's all." Roxas shrugged. "You're a cruel, petty, vengeful, loving, and honest person." And with that, he reached down and stretched one lone little hand out to a smelly, sopping Sora. "I can see," Roxas said, "why Riku is attracted to you."

"Really?" Covered in muck and reeking like the underside of a fermenting trash bag, Sora beamed like no other, hands clasped behind his back. It was at that moment that Roxas registered just what kind of a flaming queer he was really dealing with. He almost wanted to laugh. ...Almost. But that would've ruined the bad-ass impression he'd made on Sora. And Roxas just couldn't have that.

So he said, "Yeah, really," and picked up his books, a bag in each hand, just as before.

"So... how do you know him anyway?" Sora asked.

"We go way back. We were... We were good friends back on the islands."

"You must know each other really well."

"I guess... ...You know, you should tell him."

"Tell him what?"

"About Hayner. He worries about you."

"And you worry about him."

"We all worry about each other."

"I don't think everyone does. There are some people who just don't care."

x x x

It was Mayako's idea for them to go to the therapist--the psychologist--the shrink--the nut-doctor-- the next day. That day Roxas would still be there. He could possibly 'provide an insight' to Riku, she said. He could 'help them.' He could 'explain.' Roxas didn't say anything over dinner, when Mayako brought it up. It wasn't exactly like he _could_ say anything-- he was staying in the woman's house after all, and good manners seemed to win out over the idea that Riku might possibly be capable of hating his guts even more should he go along with it.

That had been Roxas' last hope, really. That Riku would get angry, throw a tantrum, pitch a fitch. But Riku seemed fed up with the entire thing-- the entire _fighting_ thing. He resigned to it that evening and slunk up the stairs to the guest bedroom after the meal. No fuss, no nothing. Roxas found the quiet of the house and its awkward inhabitants completely disturbing-- completely alien when held up against the life he'd seen Riku living the past thirteen years Roxas had known him.

So when he went upstairs and when he inched the door open for himself, he wasn't expecting to find Riku-- _his_ Riku-- sitting cross-legged and waiting on the bed.

And, not knowing what else to do, Roxas sat beside him.

And, with nothing left to do, Riku started speaking slow and sluggish, letting words drip off his tongue and roll down his chin like caring was a foreign concept.

"It's funny, you know," he murmured. "The fucking _doctors_ sent me here to get away from the stress. I come here... I move all the way out here, away from everything. A blank _slate_, for god's sake. But it's like, once you start giving a fuck about people, you get stressed anyway." _Why is that?_

"You know, Riku. The thing about humans is that they kinda... have a tendency to be human."

"Ha. Ha."

"Seriously. We've all got faults and problems. The doctors didn't have you move in with your aunt and uncle because they thought the _people_ here would do you good."

"So why'd they do it?"

"Maybe they thought... that if you were away from the things that reminded you of your parents for a while... it would get better."

"Doctors don't know shit."

"They try."

When Roxas moved closer, he did so slowly, deliberately. It was obvious when his breath shifted, when he heat shifted, when his weight shifted. The bedsprings creaked lightly and Riku felt the weight of the smaller boy pressed against his side, warm, familiar, and somehow sapping him of every ounce of will he'd forced behind his frown. His expression was neutral when Roxas leaned up, impassive when he felt the ghost of a breath across his cheek, and blank when the gap was closed and Roxas was pressed finally, fully, and firmly against him.

Riku was only really wakened into responsiveness when Roxas had pushed him backwards onto the bed, when Roxas had dug his fingers into his hair like he once had. When Roxas had breathed something Riku couldn't hear and when Roxas had breathed something Riku could-- "Are you okay then?" In some kind of determination to prove he was, in fact, perfectly damn fine, Riku tugged Roxas back down with a jerk at his shirt, forcefully slipping his tongue into the other's mouth and watching Roxas' eyes snap shut. It was like a mechanism and the predictability of it all made something in Riku ache for the way things used to be once more.

The bulge in Riku's jeans was all Roxas really needed as any kind of indicator-- if he'd been two years younger, he would've felt that surge of giddy hormonal _"I did that, I did that!"_ pride that had once stirred and swelled his little teenage heart. There were a lot of things Roxas and Riku had endured together. This, Roxas figured, was just another one of them. It would be some _thing_-- one _thing_-- possibly the last thing that they would endure, but Roxas was determined to make this one count, to make this one safe and okay and pushed behind them like the rest of their adolescence.

So when Roxas finally did figure out the button, figure out the zipper, Roxas jerked Riku off slowly. He watch the other's face carefully, seeing the hate and the resentment and the bitterness dissipate to nothingness. With his free hand he cradled Riku's knee, pressed his palm against the bone and thought, _How thin his legs've gotten-- he hasn't been running-- he wouldn't even be in shape for blitzball anymore-- not even Struggle, maybe-- he's just here now-- they don't do those things here, I guess-- Riku won't do those things anymore. _

"Riku..."

"W-what?"

"Did you ever love me?"

"No..."

"Do you love me now?"

"N-nn..."

"You can say it," Roxas said. "It's okay. I don't mind."

"**No**."

And when Roxas was sure that Riku had been reduced to a state of blankness, of emotionlessness, Roxas let him go.

Of all the people who knew Riku, Roxas was the only one who would have truly understood what to do at that moment.

"You're gonna fix it, right?" he asked in the dark. But he knew Riku heard because he could just make out the ripple of air that fanned around the other boy's eyelashes as they moved up and down in wide-eyed blinking fashion.

"Yeah," Riku said.

"And you'll fix you 'n Sora?"

"Yeah."

"Hey man... Look..." Roxas rolled on his side, nudged Riku's arm, tried to keep him awake while he said, "Look out for Kairi, too." He licked his lips and wondered if he should say more-- if saying anymore would be crossing some boundary that he as an outsider shouldn't even think of crossing. "Take her out to dinner or something."

"You do it, if you two're so 'tight.'"

He watched Riku roll away, face away, chest toward the wall, back toward Roxas. And, more than anything, Roxas felt the sudden need to kick Riku in the head. Instead, he just side and left the imaginary line uncrossed-- toed, but still uncrossed. "Maybe I will," he said dumbly.

"Just go fuck her already. You want to. She's probably waiting."

Roxas laughed. His back fell against the wall with a thunk and a socked foot stretched and prodded Riku in the side, accompanied by only the most jovial words of: "Screw you, asshole."

"Whatever."

(x) (x) (x)

Yeah, Roxas. Way to dominate. Oh, you sexy devil, you. Wearing the pants in the plot. Go you, go you.

Again, I have to keep apologizing for the horrific delays in updates. I've said it before but I'll say it again: college essays eat souls. Bear with me for another month or so-- please-- and I'll be back on some sort of normal schedule. Thanks again for reading! Many questions answered in the next chapter. Er. Hopefully.


	8. Open Ended

**Suburbia**

'Open Ended'

When Riku had first found himself relocated like he was, tossed up into what he considered to be the 'northern woods' of the world-- he had already had a plan in the making, though even he himself was unaware of it. He had already decided to lock himself up--just a man in a tower in a nowhere hell-zone, iron bar at the door and no way out. He'd figured he was as good as done, that without the sands and Destiny shores, without his dad's too-loud laughter and without his mom's wicked tendency of overcooking pancakes-- without that, without those, he was done for.

For who could live with Mayako's perfectly balanced meals and her husband's silent, shadow of a self roaming the halls of a house no one really, _really_ lived in?

Yes, Riku had condemned himself to die well enough before his day. But what he hadn't counted on was Kairi. What he hadn't counted on was Roxas. What he most certainly hadn't counted on was Sora.

...And what he most certainly, _certainly_ hadn't counted on, was the worst psychiatrist the east coast had to hack up for him.

"So. You two have been having... sexual relations?"

Roxas seemed to squirm slightly in his seat at that, but was cool enough about it to make it seem like he was just trying to get comfortable. "Not lately," he corrected Jones.

If he had given a damn about the entire ordeal, Riku might have bothered to step in. He might actually have bothered to correct Roxas with a loud and obnoxious-- _"BUT WAIT! What about that hand job you gave me last night? Was that not sexual enough for you?"_ But as it was, Riku didn't really give a damn. He just smirked. _ 'Not lately.' Right. Whatever, Roxas._

"Riku. Why don't you take it easy for a while, hm? Try not to think about your parents."

_What the hell kind of psychiatrist are you? 'Oh, well, you can't handle your problems, so just don't address them at all!' My ass. A goldfish would be a better counselor than you, you sonofa--_

"I'm going to up your prescription for Prozac and I think it would probably benefit you if you took some sleeping pills for a while. Nothing heavy, mind you. Just enough to get you a good night's sleep, enough to calm your nerves somewhat. The last thing we want is a relapse like what we saw--" Jones coughed. His fingers came together, index and thumb from each hand forming a perfect A. He coughed again. "Well, you understand."

_No. Actually, I don't. _

"Are you listening to me, Riku?"

_Not especially-- no. Fucktard._

"Yeah, I hear you," Riku said.

_You're making my ears bleed, Jones. **Bleed**._

"Alright. Take this slip out to your aunt and your medication should be ready at the pharmacy in half an hour or so."

x x x

A knock at the door. It opened even though Riku hadn't even said anything. Hadn't even bothered to acknowledge the knock to begin with.

"Riku?"

"What."

"You're not mad, are you?"

"No."

"I was just trying to--"

"What, to help?" Riku rolled his eyes and when they'd finished rolling, they weren't even focused on the kid in front of him, but off to the side, somewhere by the laundry basket. "Look, Roxas," he snapped. "I don't know what good you think you being here is doing. It's not doing anything. Okay? You make things worse. Wherever you go. You just can't keep your goddamn _nose_ out of other people's lives, can you?" He was tilting the desk chair, one arm slung over the back of it, the other resting on the desk. "You're not a help, Roxas, okay?"

"...Okay."

And then Riku felt something pressed into his hands, a lightweight piece of paper he could almost see straight through. Riku didn't think to focus on it. He looked to Roxas instead, curious and angry and not much else.

"It's a gravestone rubbing," Roxas explained slowly. Noticing Riku didn't take his eyes off him, noticing Riku was waiting on more of an explanation of sorts, Roxas sighed. "I talked to your aunt," he said. "Maybe you should, too."

Snorting, Riku's hands curled around the paper, crumpling it up into a fine ball which was promptly deposited on the guest room floor.

"Thanks, but no," he said.

Roxas had gone stiff with something that was probably akin to rage, but not exactly identical in nature. There was too much sadness in his expression for it to be any sort of true rage. Mulling over all this, Riku almost missed Roxas snap, glare, hiss-- "You know, Riku--" and then stop. Roxas closed his eyes, breathed in slowly. And he shrugged. "No. Nevermind. Sorry. It was--"

"Why don't you just go home, already, Roxas?" Riku asked suddenly. He hadn't originally meant for the words to sound so harsh. Really, they were supposed to have stayed inside his head, a quiet question never posed. But there they were, out in the open like, and seeing Roxas so hurt and so angry and so _not quite_ enraged... Riku only got more fired up. Only got more insanely motivated to break the boy down and send him packing. So he sneered, said-- "Scamper on back to Naminé so you can tell her I'm absolutely goddamn peachy, would you? But just get out of my face already."

Feeling satisfied and sickened, Riku turned to face a wall. He didn't want to stare at Roxas' confusing face anymore. But all he found to face him on the wall was a myriad of drawings and smiling stick figures. All he found to face him on the wall were confusing memories of Sora he didn't feel like facing either.

_Did I really scare him away that much? It wasn't like it meant anything. Doesn't he get that?_

"This is why you're all alone, Riku," Roxas said from behind him.

_What's why?_ Riku blinked at the slam of the door at the shuffle and bang of feet on the stairwell, sneakers on the tile, hand on the door. Slam. Over. Riku stared at his shoes, where a pair of familiar laces-- now crusted with dust and dirt and rain and sun-- looked up at him with a thousand multicolored smiles twisted and wrenched upside down. It took Riku a moment to realize that all the upside down smiles were frowns, but when he realized it, he really started feeling bad. He felt bad for the rest of the day, until he slipped into a sleep where he didn't sleep much, where he dreamed more and smiled less.

x x x

When Riku woke up, he was alone. Who knew where Roxas had spent the night. Mayako told Riku that Roxas had come by early that morning and gathered his things. Riku hadn't even stirred. Roxas was going home. And he was staying with his aunt.

By the time Kairi got around to strolling on over to Mayako's house, Riku had done a fair amount of thinking. He had come to the conclusion that he was a complete, total, utter jackass who had some kind of warped and twisted character that was absolutely undeserving of any other sort of living partner the world might have to spit up into his arms. He'd scared Sora away, driven Roxas away, and quite frankly, he was pulling straws out of his hand faster than he could replenish them and they ripped and burned and tore through skin.

Even more so when his foot crushed against something on the guest room floor.

Even more so when he smoothed out the surface of the paper, only to find a very, very eerie sight spreading out before him.

_'Riku Wataya'_

_- February 10th, 1989 -_

Kairi's light tap on the door startled him so much he nearly tore the sheet clean in two, oblivious as to how rigid his entire body had gone. He just stared at Kairi and Kairi stared back and he prayed, hoped that she would have some kind of explanation, if for no other reason than because she was Kairi. And Kairi always had explanations.

"Is this some kind of sick joke?" His voice shook and broke on 'joke' and it probably would've been funny and ironic if Riku's mind wasn't still paralyzed in a time setting two minutes too old. He watched Kairi come forward, he watched her throat move as she swallowed the piece of gum she'd been chewing on when her eyes settled on the paper Riku still clung to. The girl raised one curious little hand, almost as though she were to attempt to touch the paper if only to prove its reality. But she set her hand on Riku's shoulder instead and gently shoved him backwards into his desk chair before carefully plucking the paper from his hands. She studying it again, this time more closely, this time more slowly, until her brows were furrowed and her faced screwed up with confusion and not much else.

"Where...?"

Riku told her. "Roxas gave it to me. He's gone now. He said he talked to Mayako. But how did he get this?"

"How does _anyone_ get a grave rubbing, Riku?"

"Why is it my name?"

"What makes you think I know?"

Honestly, Kairi had just wanted to know if Riku wanted to swim with her in her pool. She had wanted to ease him back into some kind of normalcy. She had wanted to talk to him about Sora. She had wanted to do the things normal teenagers do on summer weekdays, before the sun got too high, before the pressure built too much. But Riku's very nature made that too difficult. He just sat and stared and didn't think the thoughts Kairi thought. She knew he wouldn't want to go outside. She knew he wouldn't want to talk about Sora. Now he was fixated on another thing once again, and it wouldn't leave him alone.

She knew that much at least.

_This will keep bothering you, _she thought,_ until you see it through to the end, won't it?_

Riku swallowed. He took a deep breath and clutched at his head to keep it from coming off because that's what it felt like it wanted to do, he could swear on it. _Let it go and it'll spin off on me. All I wanted to do was get over this shit. I didn't need to know that much about my fucking family. I don't want to know about them anymore. I don't want to know about anything anymore. I'm just tired. I want this shit to be over, I want..._ He wanted for things to make sense. So he made sense of them as best he could under the time constraint at hand, for even though there really was no constraint, Riku forced one upon himself.

_Kairi doesn't know anything._

He labeled it. Put a name and conclusion to it, other than coincidence. It was so he said, "I guess, in the end like this, everything revolves around death after all."

Kairi stilled.

"...Who says this is the end, silly?"

"No one, I just... It feels. Kind of like it might be. Maybe it's just a weird feeling that comes with seeing your own--"

"That's not _your grave_, Riku," Kairi said. Her hands were cool on his neck and Riku couldn't quite figure out why her hands were there, but they were smooth and comforting and he let his eyes slide closed and tried to breathe again. Kairi was saying something, but he couldn't bring himself to listen-- not until she was halfway through. Not until she had paused and then started up with: "You know, I'm sure some really smart guy somewhere once figured out that death isn't the end of one life and it isn't the beginning of another. It just **is**, you know? And it's a part of something so big and so unavoidable-- why should we fear it? Or hate it. Whichever it is you do."

"You surprise me, Kairi."

"How's that?"

"You must actually read books."

"Wh-- Hey!" Kairi's desperation and the room's seriousness melted into something easier to stomach and easier to handle. Riku was breathing freely, even when Kairi was laughing and tackling him in his chair, making some feeble attempt at whacking him multiple times on the back of the head. So when he was laughing, it felt genuine. And when he was laughing, it felt like he was okay. But when he was grabbing her wrists and twisting them backwards, he knew it was wrong. Possibly because of the strength he used against her and possibly because of the way she didn't put up any resistance.

So when he laughed again it didn't feel so genuine and all he wanted her to do was leave.

"God, you're a fucking twig," he said. "Come on, get off."

"Sorry."

"No you're not."

And thinking it was still a game, Kairi giggled. Leaned in, poked him in the nose with her fingertip before tweaking his chin. "Aww, you saw through my poorly concealed bit of a fib." Her grin faded to a small curl of her small mouth and she straightened up back to stretch her full, small size. "Come on, Riku. Let's see a smile, huh?"

And for her, Riku forced a smile.

"There you are," she whispered. She knocked her forehead gently against his-- smiled, said, "You know. You're eventually going to have to accept it."

"Accept what?"

"Death. The people who strive for it and the people who avoid it."

When Kairi clambered off of Riku and slid on her flip-flops, she almost looked like the same girl who had surprised Riku out on the back porch some weeks ago. But this Kairi was smaller. This Kairi was weaker. She still had the same tan, still wore the same skirt, she reach out for Riku's hand when she wanted to drag him somewhere along with her. But she held onto both of Riku's hands-- not just one-- and she smiled a different smile, cocked her head in a different manner. She seemed fragile and Riku didn't quite know why. And perhaps he thought to ask her, but you should know he didn't. And perhaps you should know why he didn't. But perhaps you know already.

There are some days you don't want to know that people are weak. Because there are some days when you're not sure if you can take care of them while you try and take care of yourself.

"Which are you?" Riku asked. And when Kairi didn't understand-- be it out of denial or genuine confusion-- Riku almost didn't have the patience to explain. But he tapped a hidden reserve of the stuff, of the patience. Took his time and said, "Which are you? Someone who... someone who strives for it or someone who avoids it?"

Kairi stopped laughing and just sort of stared slowly and stupidly at him, like the words didn't quite register, or like if they did register, they only glanced off the side of her perfect little ears instead of seeping to the insides. She blinked, sat on the guest bed and drew her knees up to her chest. Riku sat back down in his desk chair and for a long, long while, neither of them made a move. Riku picked at the wood-grain of the desk. Kairi studied the ceiling with a kind of intrigue Riku hadn't figured the girl possessed for much of anything. _A real space cadet_, he thought to himself. _How could I have missed that?_

"Why don't..." Kairi started. And the way she trailed off, someone might have figured she'd up and changed her mind. But really, she was just watching the cobwebs on the ceiling move in the pulse of some kind of summer heat. "Why don't we go to the graveyard?" she said. "It would help, I think. It would let you figure some things out, I mean. It would give you an out. And you could piece all this together."

x x x

It had almost been too easy, the way it had all fit together. Mayako asked no questions as to where Riku went with Kairi. Kairi's parents weren't home to ask any questions to begin with. It was just a matter of walking a few close yards away and letting Kairi slide behind the wheel and power the car down the lanes and drives and parkways to reach the site.

Throughout the entire ordeal, Riku pretty much kept quiet. Kairi had her mix CD in and for once he was happy for the cavity-inducing pop sweetness that oozed out of the speakers-- anything that would rot his brain at that point was happily embraced. About three fourths of the way through the drive, a fine rain picked up. By the time they reached the graveyard, the fine rain had become a heavy downpour that drove against the windows and threatened to kill off Riku's only source of mental numbness he found in Kairi's music.

Kairi flipped her wrist, put the car in park. Turned to face the passenger's side, turned to ask, "Riku...? Riku, what made you say that?"

"Say what?"

"What you said back there. About... about whether I look for death or try to get out of it." Her tongue flicked out, licked her lips, darted back in. She cocked her head, moved one hand to tuck a piece of hair behind her ear. She studied Riku with a sort of intensity Riku was quite prepared for and with a sort of intensity Riku wasn't entirely sure he wanted to be subjected to. "What made you ask me something like that?" she went.

"Look, it's not like... nevermind."

"No. Please?"

"I just _said_ it-- I..." Riku shrugged. Slumped against the door like he didn't know what was going on, like he didn't know how he'd gotten there.

"May's really worried, Riku," Kairi said. She was leaning towards him and her seat belt was off and Riku could smell toothpaste on her tongue. "She's really, really worried. You've got your aunt worried, you've got your uncle worried, Roxas worried, Sora worried-- and _heck_ knows you've got me worried, too. We thought you were getting better, but."

"But now you're not so sure." When Riku laughed then, he was so surprised by the sound he nearly slammed his head backwards against the glass. Instead he just swallowed the sound and gulped around the noise. Cleared his throat and fixed his friend with a stare to match her own intensity. Went, "So let's _say_, Kairi, that you actually were-- on some off chance-- really, _really_ concerned. That you really, _really_ wanted me to tell you what I think-- what I know-- is wrong with me."

Kairi blinked, sniffed, shifted in her seat. In Riku's head she was a scavenger suddenly, waiting for him to die so she could pick at all that remained. She was putrid, vile. Riku hated her and he couldn't begin to understand why. Couldn't begin to understand why-- for all that he hated her, loathed her, wanted to shove her out the car and scream and kick and curse her-- he felt so incredibly needed by her. It was this needy, whiney compulsion he silently accused her of having-- that compulsion that made him hate her so right then, though all her eyes could do was care and all her mouth could do was form a concerned little puckered pout that would not, could not be pushed from her face.

_Fuck it._

"Well fine, Kairi," Riku said. "I'll tell you. Okay? I'll make things _easy_ for you. Here it is, just for you. It's that I am now just _so depressed _that everything I used to love about this fucking world-- every stupid little thing I used to think was great and good in this _stupid fucking world_-- it all looks like crap to me. It is all absolute crap. And people, who I used to think there were **so** many of-- you know-- 'never be fucking lonely because of all these _people_'... All of these people are nowhere. If they haven't gone, if they haven't died, all they are is dust. And all they want is info and fucking analysis. The only people left are people who want to dissect me. In one way or another. Those who aren't gone and those who I don't push away-- they're just people who want to feel good about themselves by pointing out what's wrong with me."

What Riku had really wanted to say was that Kairi depressed him. Kairi with her hollow eyes and bony shoulders-- Kairi depressed him. What Riku had really wanted to say was that Sora depressed him. Because Sora and Kairi and everyone else seemed to have such a sad story for kids their age, because Sora and Kairi were the good guys and nothing bad ever happened to the good guys. Because Sora and Kairi were living proof that not everything would go according to plan.

_If everything could go according to plan, they would be a couple. If everything could go according to plan, Kairi would be full and beautiful and happy looking. No one would call her a slut. _

Kairi's arms around his neck, Kairi's head buried against his shoulder, her minty breath hot and coming in jagged little gasps because _of course_ she was crying. But she was talking, too. She was saying something.

_Of course_ she was saying something.

"I'm not just here to analyze you, Riku."

"Aren't you though? What the _hell_ do you think you were just doing? How is that-- how is that _not_?" Riku's voice was getting louder, getting to rival the rain and quiet and Kairi was all sniffles and shivers and clinging to his shirt. "And now I'm yelling and you're crying again. And you'll probably leave just like everyone else. So go on, dammit. Just leave."

Kairi clinging to him like she'd die without him. "I won't," she kept saying. "I won't, I won't, okay? I won't. I won't... You can say all the horrible things you want, Riku. But I'm _not_ going to go _away_."

Kairi, Riku thought, was quite possibly the strangest person he had ever met. She was bright, cheerful, ditzy, and yet painfully introspective all at once. And yet of all the people knew, Kairi was the only person Riku knew who could pull it off. Kairi was the only person Riku wouldn't change for the world. For all that he could hate her, want to hurt her, he would never change her. Not really.

At that one serious moment, with her hands on the wheel and her wipers squeaking across dry surface, Kairi was, in Riku's eyes, completely beautiful and hideous-- opposites at one time.

After a moment, after Kairi had stopped shaking and after he'd stopped wanting to hate her, he exhaled. He said, "...Okay."

And Kairi righted herself, slipped out of the car. Came to Riku's side and open the door, held out her hand.

"Come on. Let's go."

Riku never thought to ask how exactly Kairi knew where they were going. There were a lot of things he never thought to ask. Like why the stone angels in Destati looked so different from the stone angels on the Islands. These were older, sadder, more bent over their ground-bound little charges. None of them had lanterns and none of them looked to short of anything but miserable.

When they reached the grave, Riku wasn't sure he felt quite alive. Immediately following that thought-- _'What the hell, am I dead?'_-- came _'Of course I'm not. Fucking idiot. This is just a dead cousin. Just a dead baby cousin who no one gives a rip about anymore. That's all it is. That's all this is.'_

There was no angel over this grave and for that, Riku was glad. _This way_, he figured, _I won't feel guilty for hating on the dead._

Kairi hesitated for only a split second, and Riku would've completely missed it if he hadn't been watching her out of the corner of his eye. He still hadn't figured out why she'd thought it would do him any good in coming with her to a graveyard, for crying out loud. _What a quick fix for depression-- a little side trip to a grave that looks remarkably like your own will when you do finally kick the bucket. Kairi, you're an absolute genius. Bravo._

That occurred during Kairi's hesitation. After Kairi's hesitation? Both were kneeling by the grave, Kairi having tugged Riku's unsuspecting arm down along with her, bringing the boy to his knees. She cleared her throat. Nodded her head. Said, "Hey kid. ...Um. ...I'm Kairi. I guess you don't know me. ...You have no reason to, I mean. I'm, like... I'm not in your family or anything and I really didn't _know_ about you until just... really recently. For someone so little, you sure did do a lot of damage, you know. But it's okay. I'll take care of it. I'll make sure Riku knows how to take care of it, too. I'm sorry we could never be neighbors."

Kairi smiled. Nodded like she'd done a grand old thing. And when Riku just stared quite stupidly at the stone in front of him, she cleared her throat a little again, nudged him with her elbow.

"This is dumb," Riku said.

"No it's not. You'll feel better. Trust me, Riku. Look. If you were him, wouldn't you want to know people cared about you? Graveyards are lonely places. So?"

"..._So_?"

"Don't **be** like that, Riku Wataya."

Riku rolled his eyes. He almost cursed, but thought better of it. There were probably better places to be swearing that didn't involve dead people and disrespect and whatnot. So he rolled his eyes, wriggled his hands into his pockets. "...Fine, fine," he said. Something of a belated response, but good enough for Kairi as she smiled, nodded, rose to her feet.

"I'll be waiting in the car, m'kay?"

"Yeah, okay."

And then there was silence.

Riku blinked.

Riku sighed.

Riku chewed on the inside of his cheek and tapped the roof of his mouth thoughtfully with his tongue and dug at the dirt with the toe of his sneaker and shifted on his knees to feel the dirt seep into the denim.

"This is stupid," he muttered. He waited a moment. He sighed once more for good measure. "Okay. Uh. Your mom and dad, they... Yeah. Look. Um. Damn. ...Look. Your parents miss you. And... and I miss my parents. So. I guess we're kind of... not on the same page or anything. Maybe we are. ...Stupid, stupid, stupid... I'm sorry for not taking care of your parents. I've done a pretty shitty job of it, huh? I made your mom cry. I know that much, at least." Riku sighed. Things not going well was becoming more of a frequent kind of occurrence with him. "...Why'd you have to go and die, you stupid little brat? You were just a goddamn kid. You had it so easy."

And then Riku stopped. Not because he felt stupid and not because he felt embarrassed. He just ran out of things to say. And no matter how long he stared at his shoelaces, no matter how long he ran his eyes over their stamp-on smiles and round little faces-- no matter how much time he spent there, he knew he probably wouldn't be able to come up with much else to say. After all, there's only so much one-way dialogue that can go on between a teenager and a dead baby. There was only so much healing Riku would let himself be open to, and he'd just about reached his limit.

_No going back now._

So he stood up, dusted the dirt off his knees, scratched the back of his neck, studied the headstone a bit more. He let out a quiet, contemplative sort of "Huh," let one hand linger on the stone, and then left. He wasn't lame enough to look back and he wasn't enough of a bleeding-heart to start crying over it.

He just left.

x x x

"Roxas stayed with me last night, Riku. He told me. About you. About him. About what your life was like back on the islands. Do you miss it?"

"..."

"...I didn't go behind your back, Riku. It wasn't like that."

"Yeah. You just fucked Roxas."

"Please don't say that."

"It's the truth, isn't it? Go on, then. Tell me you didn't sleep with fucking _Roxas_."

"I _didn't_! I didn't _sleep_ with him, Riku. I just... I just wanted to know you were going to be okay."

"Well here's a news flash for you, Kairi. I'm _not_ going to be okay. And not you, not Roxas, not _anyone_ can change that."

"What about Sora?"

"Not Sora."

x x x

Night fell like slow-motion deadweight in a zero gravity kind of an atmosphere. Riku sat and stared out the window and pined away for the hour when he could roll over and pretend to be asleep. It was a familiar feeling and it was one he wasn't the least bit comfortable in tackling, but there it was and there it was to be dealt with and handled in his own immature, teenage kind of way. He sighed. He wondered if he would ever walk through the door, look Mayako in the eye, and say, "Hey, I'm home."

_Tcc-kah!_

Because it seemed like such a simple thing that he shouldn't have had any desire to say it. But it had popped up and taken root in his brain and wouldn't go away. _"Hey, I'm home."_

_Tcc-tcc-tcc-kah!_

Unmistakable that time-- the sound of someone throwing some small something-or-other at Riku's bedroom window. And really, there was only one person it could possibly have been.

"Hey you."

Leaning out the window a little, Riku didn't quite know what to make of it. He was either delusional or high or simply very, very lucky. "Sora?" he said.

And for lack of anything better to do, Sora nodded. Sora smiled. Sora hooked his thumbs through his belt-loops and let himself ease back into a thoughtful slouch, let himself start speaking once he had at least thought of something to say. Not much else aside from that, but the saying was something it and of itself.

"So I've got this friend," Sora started. "And he's a real complete moron of a guy. He's kind of a deserter, on top of that. Maybe you've heard of him. Anyway. This friend's a total sap, too." He smiled, he shrugged. He was trying, more than anything, to not look like he wanted to turn tail and run-- which, in all fairness, he absolutely did. "I don't have much of a right to ask you anything, but it'd be great if you came down so we could talk. Just for a while."

Not knowing what else to do, Riku shut the window. And maybe, for half a second, he considered leaving it at that. A closed window, nothing more. But he felt his feet rolling across the carpet, pushing him down the stairs, propelling him towards the door. It was the unstoppable action-reaction sneak attack his body had built up and stored away from him. _Action: Sora seeks attention. Reaction: Riku gives attention. Action: Sora asks to see you. Reaction: Your body asks to see Sora._

Outside the house it was warm and humid and promising a thunderstorm later. Even the lightning bugs were frenzied, bulbs bursting and blinking in the thick black air. Riku, arms folded, head bent, knees collapsing in so he was just sitting, just flopped down on the front steps, down before Sora. Down before Sora, who stood and stared and said nothing for a good minute or so.

Sora blinked. Smiled. Laughed and choked and coughed it up.

"Okay. Uh. This is gonna sound totally retarded," he said, "but now that you're here, I have no idea where to start."

Riku wanted to smile. He just didn't. "Well, how about coming off and saying who your friend is, huh?"

"Ha ha. Very funny." Sora sighed, rubbed his neck, chanced a peek at Riku through a heavy fray of bangs. "You're mean, you know that?" he asked. "That obvious, huh?"

Riku smirked. Couldn't help it. "Where've you been all my life, Sora?"

"Right here?"

"Okay, so where've you been the past... you know."

"...Roxas came to see me. Did you know that?"

"No." _Roxas has a habit of getting around. Roxas has the biggest goddamn habit of getting everywhere and getting around._ "He did?"

"Mmhm." Mouth hung open a moment, Sora tongue flicked out to wet his lips. Was he nervous or just bored of thinking? Either way, it was enough to pull a lazy, awkward smile from him. "I like him," he told Riku.

"Well, that makes one of us."

"Why are you so hard on him anyway, Riku?"

"I think I asked you a question first."

"...Right." A sigh, a fidget. Sora sank down to sit beside Riku, careful not to touch him, trying not to look at him. "Look," Sora mumbled, "I just... I just got a little... weirded out."

"Weirded out? You mean _scared_, right?"

"No, I don't mean 'scared', Riku. I mean what I mean."

Silence. Crickets were getting lazy and sloppy and all it was was watery air and tired bugs and confused kids on steps with nowhere to go and nowhere to be. And it was bad and getting worse and Riku feared it coming. _So what if I don't fix things here? So what if this is it? What if I go through this year and what if it's hell? What'll it do to me? Will I even make it through it? If not my heart, what else could go wrong? What else could possibly get fucked up now? _

"This isn't working, is it?" Riku's question was quiet and he wished he'd voiced it louder. Wished he hadn't voiced it at all, but easier to wish a fact different than to wish a fact gone.

"Not the way I'd planned..." Sora said.

"Try again?"

So Sora did. "I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean it like that."

"Like what?"

"Like... you scare me. You don't."

"Always good to hear."

Eyelids at half-mast and a tired little sigh. It had never occurred to Riku that Sora might possibly be tired, might possibly be losing sleep over all this. Riku slept sadness away, Sora stayed up through it, all through the night. There was probably some important difference between the two of them there that Riku just wasn't picking up on. That he still didn't pick up on, even when Sora's voice cut straight and clear and tried to be demanding. "Riku... don't just joke about it when it's serious, okay? You're so drop-dead serious all the time-- don't go changing on me when I need you to be like that!"

"Sorry," Riku said. It sounded lame, even to him, but there wasn't much else he could do or say.

"You don't scare me," Sora said again. More for his benefit than Riku's.

"Did what _happened_ scare you? Was that it?"

Sora shrugged, hung his head. Sighed again. "I felt really, really bad, Riku," he said. "You could be dead."

"So could you. How does no one _get_ that? A bomb could drop on us right now and we could all be dead. I mean, what does it really matter?"

"It matters to _me_, Riku. Maybe it doesn't matter to you because you think different from me. But it does matter to me. I don't want you dying just because you didn't take control of something you could have. Or should have. Or--" Sora's mental train derailed and powered itself down into the metaphorical ditch below. He grit his teeth, rubbed his temples, tried to pull it back together-- What do I mean, what do I mean?-- "Grrr..." He could have possibly meant to say that he didn't want to get his heart broken-- too cliche-- or perhaps he could've meant to tell Riku not to waste the life given to him-- too holier-than-thou-- and yet maybe, really, all Sora meant to say was exactly what he said. "It's not going to be okay between us anymore. You know that, right?" Swallowed, continued with, "I mean, this isn't something can just be forgiven and forgotten."

"What is there to forgive?" Riku asked.

"Me and you," Sora said. "You and me," he corrected himself. "Whatever," he tried. Saying and correcting and trying and pretty much failing. But it was the trying that was key and Riku's hand was reaching for his shoulder, shaking him around, grabbing his attention.

"So we made a mistake. And it was a... kind of big mistake. It was--"

"My idea."

"But **_I_** went through with it."

"So we're partners in crime now?"

"Exactly," Riku said, smiling. It was only half-forced, really, so it had to mean something. It had to be some kind of a good sign. Sora tickling patterns into the concrete surface and Riku only half-forcing a smile beside him. It **had** to be some kind of a good sign.

There was, what some would call, a sort of companionable silence after that. A short-lived companionable silence, both boys trying to get things in order so as not to end up sounding like a complete moron in front of the other when they actually did return to talking like normal people. And after the silence was an awkwardness, where Sora would open his mouth to speak and Riku would catch his voice in his mouth and back down and Sora would see this and shut up and Riku would almost jump in but figure at the last moment that Sora would want to speak first and Sora would figure it would be more polite to let Riku go and Riku didn't care about politeness but he did care about politics and politics was telling Riku that Sora should go.

So Sora went. he sighed and huffed and said--

"So how do you expect us to fight it, huh? Don't you _ever_ think about anything but you, Riku? What would we all do if our entire stupid, pathetic lives came crashing down on us? How the heck do you think we would fight that? If there was no one who cared, if it felt like we'd done something so horrible and so wrong that we'd screwed up our lives and there was no fixing it-- that we'd messed things up so bad that there was no way out, that-- that--"

"What would you do?" Riku asked.

"What would _we do_?" Sora asked.

"You'd... fight it any way you could. Wouldn't you?"

"Then what are _you_ doing?"

"I'm _trying_."

"Well you're not trying hard enough. I want a friend, Riku. I want a good friend. So can you handle that or not?"

_'Can you handle that or not?' I don't know. I'd like to say I'll try, but I don't know if trying is even good enough anymore. Are we past trying? Or is that just all we've got left now? _

"Well," Riku said, "friendship with you sure isn't something to be taken lightly, huh?"

"No. It's not. And if you ever even wanna hope to be more than friends with me, you better be willing to give it _alllll_ up, buddy."

"I'll keep that in mind."

"I meant it though."

"What?"

"When I asked what to do. I don't know what to do."

"Well. If people are going to make... that... like, suicide and all that... if they're gonna make it, like, trendy... if they're going to twist it in ways it isn't, I mean. If they're going to take it all wrong. That's just culture, man."

"**Culture**."

Riku nodded. He didn't actually know what he was talking about, but improvisation was talent you could develop, or so he'd heard. What he was saying was making sense to him, at least, and he'd known Sora to make sense out of some pretty nonsensical things, so Riku figure he was set enough. He propped himself up on his arms, nodded his head, said, "So. You don't like the culture? _That_ means you join the ranks of the counterculture. And if the counterculture doesn't have it for you, you counter the counterculture. And you keep countering and countering until you've countered the bad and held onto the good. And then, I figure, you'll probably be set for life. Sound good?"

"Yeah. It sounds really good."

Riku moved again, had his arms looped over Sora's shoulders and his chin rested atop the ruff of messy brown hair he found on the kid's head. It was mutually decided then that they would stop talking for a while, if only to do nothing else than cool off, simmer down, try and let be all that wouldn't just be and be alone. Sora leaned back into Riku's hold, head slipping back and locking in the curve of Riku's neck and when Riku chuckled Sora felt his head shake and the boy's Adam's apple shift against his skull. It was a silly feeling, a weird feeling, but in spite of it all, it felt perfectly placed.

There could be no better way to carve out the end of a summer evening-- no better way than patching things up and making things better than they'd been before. Sora smiled. Sora figured he'd done well. Sora figured it would only get better. Sora figured... and he figured and figured and drew lines between the stars to make all the little pictures that danced in his head, pictures from the year ahead-- Riku and Sora and Kairi.

Sora turned his head to hear a heartbeat and breathe in Riku-- a faint smell of deodorant and freshly-washed flannel that had Sora torn between wanting to giggle like an idiot and wanting to bury his face deeper. He understood that doing that would make Riku think things were okay. And while Sora, more than anything, wanted for things to be okay, he refused to let himself play the role of laissez-faire lovebird anymore.

_I'm going to be like Roxas_, he decided. _I'm going to face this head-on. Like... arm-wrestle problems to the ground and-- and kick them in the shins! All for Riku. Just for Riku..._

That was ironic. But Sora didn't know. Roxas was already gone.

And yet when Sora began talking, he was talking, truly, for himself and no one else. Maybe he spoke partially for Riku's benefit, partially to clarify, to clue the boy in, to shed a little dirty light on an even dirtier situation. But really, he talked to release it all. If I'm going to face it head-on, I'm going to face it with a clean slate, too. _I'm going to make it all right. _

Sora turned himself around, faced Riku, his own arms twining around Riku's shoulders while he felt the other's encompass his waist. He opened his mouth, closed it again, opened it once more, and closed it when Riku smiled. _I'm going to make it all right._ Taking in air, Sora told his story to Riku, from beginning to end. He watched Riku's eyes the entire time. He refused to break that contact because if he did, who knows what Riku would think. Sora's eyes showed he was ashamed. Sora's eyes showed that he knew better now. They showed he learned his lesson and they showed he would be a better friend.

_I'm not afraid. _

That was why Sora didn't look away.

_I'm going to make it all right._

"I'm going to make it all right," he said when he was done. His voice was cracked and sore and his throat felt like it'd been ripped wide open with a razor blade. He was aware Riku was gaping and he was aware his face was burning, but the words wouldn't leave his head and they kept pushing on. _I'm going to make it all right all right all right all right all--_

"Riku?" he asked.

"...Yeah?"

"Do you think I'm a bad person? For all that? Do you hate me?"

"No. Never."

"This could be the hardest time in your life, you know. Wouldn't it be great if this was as hard as it got? If it only got easier from here on out?"

"Yeah. It would."

They stayed like that until they were comfortable with one another once again, until the silence gave way to some other breed of the stuff, softer and soothing and with some kind of bizarre healing properties that both kids had figured only existed in legend. The air didn't feel quite so stifling, the atmosphere didn't seem quite so heavy. For the first time in what felt like the longest time, the two of them could breathe just a little easier.

"Hey Riku?" Sora said.

"Yeah?"

"There's a faire coming to town tomorrow. We should go while it's here. Cotton candy and corn dogs and stupid, cheap, old rides. Sound good?"

And because he really couldn't think of anything else to say, Riku just smiled a little stiffly and shifted closer, just enough so he could slip an arm around the boy's shoulder. Sora eased into the hold like it was something natural, and because of that, Riku said, "Yeah, Sora. It sounds really good."

They had backtracked from a fancy Italian dinner to a carnival ride, but Riku didn't really care. If Sora was there, Riku was naive enough to think that everything would play out alright in the end. He had faith enough in the boy to follow him doggedly and blindly to wherever he wanted to go-- to the top of the world or to the top of some wild ride or another-- it didn't make the slightest bit of difference.

x x x

Mayako was sitting at the kitchen table, elbows bent, head poised over a heavy mug of tea. Riku walked in, plucked a package of crackers from the cupboard, munched away quietly in the corner, up against the counter. His aunt didn't move and he almost chanced a guess that she'd gone and fallen asleep. That at any second she would pitch forward, face in her mug and tea up her nose and Riku would have no choice but to laugh stupidly and helplessly.

But she wasn't asleep. She was just there, tired and drawn and old.

"May?" Riku asked. When she didn't seem to answer, he shoved two more crackers in his mouth. Waited in the silence, made an effort of chewing loud and slow to let her know he was still there, still waiting for some kind of acknowledgment. And finally, she did look up. She did turn to face him. But Riku was caught off guard because she wasn't angry, she wasn't annoyed. She just looked... sad.

"Your baby," Riku said. Swallowed. "What were you going to name him?"

"...Riku," she said. And it was something in the way she said it-- the hesitance of it, maybe-- that made Riku think that either wanted to smile or cry. "We were going to name him Riku."

_We were going to name him Riku and they didn't know what they were going to name you. They didn't know what they were going to name you because they did know what you'd be. We were cautious, they were wild. We had to know, they had to sit in for the surprise. But oh, **imagine** the **surprise** when it was **us** with the stillborn, **them** with the beautiful, beautiful baby boy. We'd been so excited. Like sisters. Our children to be born within a week of each other. Our children to be born within a few days of each other. So close, we imagined you'd grow up to be so close, like siblings, not cousins._

_They named you Riku in honor of my dead baby boy._

None of it was spoken. Riku had stopped eating crackers, Mayako had stopped pretending to care about tea that had long since lost its warmth.

She either wanted to smile or cry, but she couldn't decide which.

So Riku left before he gave her the chance to make up her mind.

And in the guest room, he closed the door and was silently glad that Roxas wasn't there anymore. Riku needed time to sit and time to think and time to try and digest everything that Sora had just told him. He listened to sounds of the house for a while after and thought to himself how different the sounds seemed from what they used to be-- what they used to be back on the islands.

Back there, nighttime brought along his father watching Mary Tyler Moore re-runs and his mother laughing loudly at all the wrong times. Back there, nighttime meant the ocean quieted and stilled and hushed itself down to a quiet plop against the dock, a smooth swish against the shoreline. Back there nighttime was relaxing and a time for sleep. Here, Riku found that sleep didn't come so easily. That night brought thought and thought brought uneasiness.

Still or not, calm or not, he replayed Sora's words in his head as they came to mind, in order, starting from beginning of Sora's story and drawing it out until the very, very end, until Sora's brutal question, until Sora's _"--what is it that's going to make us--"_

x x x

_--okay? I'll just... I'll just tell you what it was, okay, Riku? And if I tell you, you won't have to worry anymore. And we won't talk over your head anymore and we won't keep secrets from you anymore. My 'n Kairi 'n you. We're going to be fine, so I'm going to tell you everything, okay? And then we can stop worrying about it and we can stop being sick about it all the time. So I'll just start talking and... and you can hear it if you want. That's why I came here. To explain. Or to try and explain. I think. So I'm trying. I'm trying right now, okay?_

_"God, my fuckin' dad... I hate him. Man, I hate that guy." I told you that I thought you were like Hayner. Or maybe I didn't tell you. I told Roxas. Because Roxas came to see me and you didn't._

_"Don't say that."_

_"What, don't tell me you're one of those people who, like... Just because they're your parents-- doesn't mean you have to love them or anything, Sora. Man, get... get _real_. The crap some people put their kids through-- the shit they--"_

_Hayner was... he was kind of... wired. Emotional. Strung up all the time on being wronged, because people wrong each other a lot and never even know or care about it. You couldn't do something bad to Hayner and not know it. That's what I mean._

_"Hayner, come on, it... it's not that bad?"_

_"Yeah. Whatever. Whose side are you on?"_

_"I'm not on anyone's **side**, I'm just--"_

_"Okay, Sora. See ya Monday."_

_"...I'm just trying to help."_

_And it was like, he was always so melodramatic, you know? He was always a little over-the-top. He always exaggerated. Always took things as more than they were._

_"...Hayner. What's that?"_

_It was stupid to ask. I could read. And so this one day, on his wrists, he'd carved out 'FuCK yoU', sharp and bloody and... sad. Scabbed._

_And I didn't say anything._

_I stared at his arms and he laughed and laughed and I didn't say anything because I thought... like, I thought it wasn't my place, you know? I thought Hayner was overreacting again. And again and again... It's funny, I guess. When we're little, people say things like... they say things like, "When people are in trouble, you know who you call, right kids? You call the police. You call 9-1-1. The police are there to help you." All the police ever did for Hayner was bust him for smoking when he was sixteen. They didn't even think to look at his parents. But then, no one ever does. Not really._

_'My old man pushed me down the stairs,' he'd say. 'So I punched him and he twisted my wrist.' He'd just **say** it. And I thought-- I thought, like, oh, he must be lying, because no one would be so_ open _about their problems. People who _scream _for help scream in _quiet _ways. Hayner just wants_ attention. _Hayner just wants people to_ notice _him. Hayner just wants people to think he's cool because he takes pain like he takes drugs._

_And I couldn't accept the idea that maybe Hayner didn't scream for help in quiet ways. That maybe, what everyone else picked up-- the drugs, the pills, the cutting, the... the, just, the way people hurt themselves now like it's some kind of-- like they wanna be martyrs, all of them. The way people do that-- maybe that's fake, but maybe part of it's real. I don't know, but I didn't realize it then. Hayner was with everyone else in that stupid fad that kills stupid kids because they can't get over their stupid problems._

_If you do that to yourself... if it's real or if it's fake... something has to be wrong inside no matter what. That's what I think, anyway. That's what I think now. Fad or not, it's like this contagious germ that makes people hurt themselves. And it makes them sick. Because to hurt yourself, you have to be sick, right?_

_But... people were so_ mean _to Hayner. They'd do what they do best-- teenagers I mean. High school. They were mean, but they were mean in quiet ways. I keep saying that... you know. That whole 'quiet' thing. We're all so loud, but we keep the real stuff so silent, I guess. That's what I'm trying to say. Everyone is usually so loud about the obvious good and the obvious bad-- you know, "Fuck, I failed a trig test," or, "We won this, we won that, isn't it great, isn't it great?" And no one is ever open about real things... like... what worries them all the time. What doesn't leave them alone. What grates away at them until it's killing them inside, but it's so deep down that they can't pull it out and they can't explain and they can't..._

_I don't know. They just can't._

_And people have gotten so used to the quiet, they don't know what to do when someone screams._

_Like Hayner._

_"God, that fucking emo prick," I'd hear them say. They'd call him a fag, a druggie, even though all he'd really ever done was smoke a pack of cigarettes-- okay, maybe two. They'd make up all this shit about him and they'd just pass it around between themselves and feed off it like they were starving. "Hayner does this, Hayner does that. Did you see his arms? He's so fucked up, he's so fucked up. He's going to O.D., he's going to kill himself, that pussy, that fucking pussy."_

_...Why did they get so mad about it? Why did they get so wound up about it, but not help him at all? Why did they just watch and gossip? I mean, just why? Why the hell are we so--so--_

_I don't know. Horrible, is what I was going to say. Hayner would've agreed. He always thought the worst of people, anyway. Maybe it was just him or maybe it was his parents, too. He had no siblings, so it was just him and the thing that pushed him so hard and dug inside him. One of those things. And he didn't shut up and he told people, I'm sure, because he wasn't ashamed of the fact that there was something wrong in his life and because he wasn't that confident in his own... his own strength to take it himself. And I'm not saying Hayner's not strong or Hayner doesn't think he's strong. He can be stubborn and stupid like everybody else, but for once he thought ahead and for once he realized this one big, important thing. And everybody trashed him for it._

_Even me. I just listened to him and thought he was going through a phase or that fad. That he made stuff up so he had an excuse to join everybody else in the cutting craze, in the self-mutilation **party** that rose up out of nowhere. _

_And then he got emaciated from his parents. He stopped going to school. People said he was in a mental ward because he'd tried to kill himself. They would've said stupid shit like that. They did. But they were all lies. Hayner had just... dropped things. His parents, his school. He got a new school, a new place to live. But that's about the time I realized that I had completely, totally failed him as a friend and as anything else. You can't just pull one over a judge, I mean. You have to have proof that your life with your parents is so miserable, you would be better on your own, you would be so much better on your own. They don't make it easy and they don't make it nice._

_Hayner must have had something big and something concrete. A heck of a bruise, a video tape, a recording, a mark of some huge kind that must have been real that his dad had caused or his dad had done or-- I don't even know. Where was his mom during all this? I don't know. Where were his friends? That's the big question. We were there. We thought he was lying. I thought he was lying._

_The day Olette told me about Hayner-- how he was okay, he wasn't sick, he wasn't dead, he wasn't in a ward-- I was... I felt so low. I can't even describe it. I had just let him down so completely. He had told me about all this crap, he had trusted me with it and I hadn't done a thing. I hadn't even taken him seriously._

_So, when I was walking home, I was waiting at the intersection and I wondered what would happen if I walked into the street. Just-- then. 'Just walk into the street, Sora,' it was like. 'Just walk into the street and see what happens and see what everyone starts to say about_ **you**. _Because you deserve it anyway. Because you put Hayner through it. Because you're faithless and you're selfish and you didn't give what you needed to give and you didn't...' It just went on. So I walked into the street. So I got hit by a bus._

_And so, sure enough, people talked. And they hated. And I was right where Hayner had been. "God, that stupid little emo prick. All he wants is attention. 'Oh, look at me, I'm so cool, I kill myself.' Hahaha..." The thing was...? We weren't bad kids. Hayner, me-- we weren't outcasts. We had friends. We were normal. But people just hate quick. That's all it is, I guess. People hate quick and point fingers quicker._

_"You. You're messed up. You're screwed up so bad. You are, you are, you, you, and you." That sort of thing._

_When my mom found out I'd done it on purpose, she cried even more than she did when she found me in the hospital to begin with. And when Kairi found out? ...When Kairi found out, she didn't cry. She hit me. And she kept hitting me. And she wouldn't stop until the nurse came in and pulled her out of the room, but she was kicking and screaming and going, "You're so stupid, Sora! You're so _**stupid**_!"_

_She hit me later, when I was home, when she came to visit. She brought me flowers and put them in a vase and I said, "I'm not sick or anything," which was something of a lie, so she slapped me. And then she started crying and she was crying so hard that she fell over and knocked the vase she'd just set down onto the ground. It didn't break, but she spilled water all over herself. She was crying anyway-- getting her shirt soaked anyway-- so it didn't matter so much._

_"How would you like it if I did that to myself, Sora?" she said._

_And I told her, "I wouldn't like it. I know I wouldn't like it. I didn't do it to make you mad, Kairi."_

_"Well guess what, Sora? You did. You really, really did and it hurts, okay? You didn't just make me mad, you really, really hurt me. So I'm going to hurt you, Sora. I'm going to hurt you really, really badly, too."_

_She raised her foot and smashed the vase and took the glass and cut her hand and I started screaming and Kairi kept crying and Mom had to come in and pull her away again._

_The next time I saw her was at school two weeks later. I don't know where she was during that time. I have my guesses but I've never asked her about it, really. I've never wanted to know. But when I saw her again, I saw her feet first. I was sitting against the wall eating lunch alone and I saw her feet come and stop. For a minute I thought she was some jerk who was going to ask me to move, to get off the floor because it was no place to be. But then she sat next to me. She put her backpack in her lap and she rested her head on my shoulder and she just didn't move. And I just didn't move. I didn't want to break her. Like she broke the vase. I didn't want to hurt her like she hurt herself._

_Our parents met with one another and talked about whether or not they wanted to let us be friends anymore. That sounds weird now that I say it. Whether they'd let us be friends or not. Like they could've stopped us even if they'd really wanted to? But Kairi and I were listening at the door and Kairi swung it open and told them all-- told all our parents-- that they were idiots if they thought that would help. She told them all that were friends from the start and we'd be friends until the end. _

_And it was kind of cryptic, her saying that, but I'd never loved her more._

_And even later in that week when neither of us could sleep without the other being there, even later in that month when Kairi told me she wanted to have sex, even later in that month when we tried, but failed, but still loved each other anyway... _

_Even then, I thought it'd be okay. That no matter what the kids at school said, Kairi and I understood. Kairi and I would be okay. We'd make it okay._

_Heh. And it was... that time, you know. When we tried to have sex. When Kairi found out I was gay. She started laughing like nothing I'd ever seen before and I hadn't even heard her laugh in a month or more. She just kept laughing and laughing and when she was done, she said, "That's okay. Because if there'd been a mistake, we would've been some godawful parents, Sora. You know why? Because our parents don't know what to do with us. We wouldn't know what to do with our kids. We'd get old and stupid and we wouldn't know what to do with those kids we'll never have."_

_That's where you come in, Riku. And it was about your parents, too, wasn't it? You were hurting, too. You didn't keep it quiet-- if people asked, you told them. Kairi asked and you told her. You didn't lie, you didn't hide from it. But it was killing you and anybody could see it. And Kairi told me about you, you know. She said how sad it was, how sad it was that someone so cool and so amazing was being ripped to bits by so many things. And it's like, I remember-- I clearly remember her saying:_

_"It's weird. He's been put through so much and he's hurting so bad. He's killing himself, but don't look at me like that, Sora. He's not killing himself like you think. He's not one of them. Or if he is, it's different. He's like that problem, personified."_

_I guess I remember a lot of things Kairi says. It's hard not to. Sometimes they make sense. Those are the things I remember._

_But what she meant, really, was that all the little kids who slice up their wrists, all the little girls and boys who pop seven pills to push a fad or an issue or a genre or anything-- all of them were you. Kind of. They hurt themselves and you hurt yourself. Your body did it to you and, really, their bodies did it to them, too. It's not a fad, like people think... You made me realize that, you know. It's not a fad. It's not meant to be a fad. You had no control over the pain, and I pretty much think that no one else has control over the pain, either._

_And I remember thinking... it was like in the fifties. Don't-- don't get all annoyed or anything, I _mean_ it. And it's relevant, so listen. The fifties. Jack Kerouac. The Beat Generation. Riku, I'm serious, here. Listen, okay?_

_Kerouac and his Beat Generation. You know how it got the name, right? It got the name because all the kids of middle-class suburban America-- they were all so sick of perfection and so sick of the way things were moving. They were bored in that life and they were bored with what their parents wanted from them. They'd go against their parents, wear clothes that made their moms cringe, read books that made their dads angry. They'd go cross-country, they'd write, they'd sing, they'd do whatever they could to find this invisible '**it**' they were looking for. They would do dangerous, stupid stuff. They felt the need for that danger and they felt the need to put themselves on the line to try and defeat whatever it was weighing them down._

_They didn't want white picket fences and green lawns or pearls or vacuums. They wanted enlightenment. That was the **it**. And they were all trying so hard to get **it** and they were all striving so damn much _for_ **it**. And they all wore themselves out. And that's what Kerouac said about them. That they were tired. That they were beat. The Beat Generation was no more than the generation that got so worn out in trying for what they really wanted._

_If the fifties was beat, I think we are, too. Maybe we're just starting again and maybe it won't get any worse. Maybe I'm completely wrong. We don't want the perfect household anymore. We just **want**. And we're going to get so tired in trying to **get**. Maybe our cuts and our bruises we put on ourselves-- maybe that's how we push up against society. Maybe with drugs and sex and alcohol, we'll be enlightened and happy, just like the beats wanted, and just like we want now. Right? Because if it's not drugs and if it's not sex and if it's not alcohol and razor blades and pill bottles, what is it that's going to make us okay?_

x x x

"Riku..."

"Wh-huh-what?"

"Riku..."

"What?"

"It's terrible... Oh God, I'm sorry, Riku. I'm so sorry."

"M-Mayako? What is it?"

"The phone... on..." "Kairi's dead."

'_What? Um. **No**_', was the only thought that surfaced in Riku's head at first. Just '_No_,' plain and simple.

_No. That's not possible. I saw Kairi a few hours ago. She dropped me off. She took me to the graveyard earlier and we talked to headstones. She was fine. She was laughing and acting just like she always does. There was nothing wrong with her. There **is** nothing wrong with her. Dead? Like hell. That doesn't even make sense. Why would she be dead? Nothing's wrong with her. _

"She's dead?" Riku heard himself ask.

"Riku, I'm so sorry."

"Wait, no. _What_?"

_Nothing happened, that's what. What a dumb question. She's asleep just next door._

"...I..."

"She's _dead_?"

"Yes, Riku. I'm--"

"What happened?"

_Nothing._

"Her heart."

_She's not okay._

"Her heart failed."

_...Dead?_

Riku shuddered. For a moment, Mayako thought he was crying. She wept along with him, reached out to cradle him in her arms-- _Please_, she thought. _Please take my comfort, it's all I have to give you. Please, please._ She was delighted when he did not push her away, when he allowed her to hug him, to soothe him, to whisper to him it would be alright. She cried harder, her own heart swelling and filling with such love while Riku's own heart fluttered wildly and then stilled in his chest.

"It'll be okay, Riku. God, I'm sorry. Oh God, I'm so sorry, baby. I'm here. It's okay. It'll be okay."

For the second time, Riku was whisked away to the hospital in the back of ambulance.

x x x

There would never be a third time.

x x x

There was one funeral held for both Kairi and Riku. They combined them-- the two families-- because they figured that the children would have wanted it that way. It was a small ordeal that took place on a hot day when it didn't rain, when everyone lined up in the graveyard donned their black grudgingly. Riku's coffin stood in the graveyard as a matter of principal. Mayako and her husband had arranged for Riku's body to be cremated and his ashes to be buried alongside those of his parents.

No one could get ahold of Roxas or Naminé. But then, no one had really tried, either.

The priest in charge of the funeral knew nothing of either child other than they had both died of heart complications. The girl, because she had starved the life out of herself and worn down the muscle in the process-- the boy, because he had some sort of strange stress disorder. Such was the focus of his speech.

"The heart is a fickle thing..."

It may once have passed for bad poetry, but it was painfully obvious to anyone who cared that the words existed only to take up time, only to conceal the holes and the gaps in a story that one supposedly holy man knew nothing of.

"...we will grow stronger through these trials and tribulations..."

He was wondering, while all this was going on, what he would be having for dinner that night.

"...may they find peace among those already departed."

For a long time, Kairi's parents stood alongside Mayako and her husband. And then, gradually, they shifted away. Both parties somehow knew that it was over. That there would be no more dinner parties, no more recipe exchanges. Each blamed the other side accordingly and each took their own place in a position of denial.

Sora didn't go to the funeral. Sora went to the used bookstore. He went to the parking lot in the back. He was only shaken from his trance when he realized that there was no more school bus and that where the bus had rested for all those months there was now a vacant space only holding the burning asphalt that made it and nothing more. So Sora pressed his hands against the asphalt until he thought he could feel skin not his own, until he thought he could feel Kairi's soft hands and Riku's hard flesh. Until he thought he could feel muscle and blood and pulse and life.

But in the end, it was really only asphalt. Asphalt and nothing more.

x x x

_"Kerouac is all that," Sora explained-- careful, calculating. "But the indians are old and ancient and pure. They didn't talk about regret," he said, "because they knew nothing about it. No hookers, no cities, no drugs, no pollution. Anything and everything was minor and natural. They had honor."_

x x x

_Whether Kairi understood or not, Riku didn't know. But when she bent down again, all Riku saw was her tiny little hand, somewhere between the color of mocha and porcelain, outstretched and perfectly calm. Her voice was demanding when she said it, when she spoke. "Let's go now." But she smiled and that was what made it okay. Not that Riku saw it, but that he felt it through her fingertips as they slipped around his wrist._

x x x

_And on his wrists he'd carved out 'FuCK yoU', sharp and bloody and... sad. Scabbed._

x x x

_And I didn't say anything._

x x x

_"It'll be okay."_

x x x

The next day, Sora went to the faire in the mall parking lot before it opened, before the rest of the world had really woken up at all. He slipped a man a twenty and asked him to stop it at the top.

"Just for five minutes," Sora said. "Please."

And the man, even though he knew he'd get chewed out for it, could only do as Sora asked. For there was something in Sora's manner, in the way he asked just so, that didn't leave room for refusal as an option.

Sora rode the ferris wheel as high as it would go, and he hung there, suspended in air, until the sun came up on suburbia.

(x) (end) (x)


End file.
